Animal House
Apparently I’ll have to change the name of this thing to Critter Blog, since critters are all that’s happening around here apart from news items being typed into the computer and spirited off to FortBendNow.
So here’s more on a sad story about an armadillo and a skunk.
Chapter 1: The faithful reader may recall we had a hyperactive armadillo drill a hole from under the house down 25 feet below the back steps and under the driveway. Between me and Bosco the Wonderdog, we persuaded the thing to find more suitable quarters.
Chapter 2: It did. It dug a nifty two-door burrow that began under the front side of the house, included a comfortable living room directly under my front porch, and then had the added luxury of another entryway in the middle of the hedge in my front yard.
Chapter 3: And then, as you may recall, the dog ousted the thing after a few days. There was peace for about 36 hours before the skunk moved into that burrow.
Chapter 4: And then I evicted the skunk, after six weeks of crawling on my belly below the floor beams, and stuffing ammonia-soaked rags into the skunkhole.
Presto! Problem solved!
Here’s the latest chapter: I’m sitting in an easy chair (why do they call ‘em “easy?”) watching TV, when I hear a sniffing sound out front. It’s so loud it sounds like Bosco on the hunt. Only he’s supposed to be out back and I’m thinking he got loose. I flip on the light and go outside, but can’t see anything on the porch. Only that sniffing. I look under the lawn furniture and find an overweight armadillo.
Next morning, on a hunch, I look under the front hedge. Sure enough.
The damn armadillo has re-excavated the formerly sealed den that it built in the first place.
Meanwhile, the dog woke the kids up early this morning baying at a small and typically stupid possum perched on one of the back fences, which couldn’t figure out that all it had to do was jump off the fence into the neighbor’s yard to avoid being eaten.
And, not to be forgotten, for a couple of months now these giant red ants have been building an underground city and piling the dirt from same in giant hills, at first trying to hide them under my tropical landscaping, then later not bothering to hide the mounds at all.
They aren’t particularly aggressive, and are at least three times the size of fire ants. I didn’t think much about it until they started turning the side yard into moonscape.
Whatever they eat, it’s not fire ant bait. It has no effect upon them whatsoever.
Oh, yeah, and there’s a squirrel or mouse or rat living above the bathroom ceiling.
I just thought you’d want to know.
→ B.Dunn, Oct 07, 2005, 08 32 am
