Rough Day for the Easter Bunny
Armadillos sometimes live for awhile in underground dens they’ve dug around here – one under the back steps, one under the front porch with two openings, one near the driveway under a redbud bush, and another among a big cluster of cast iron plants surrounding an old pecan tree.
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I used to actively discourage them, but don’t anymore, since I learned about one of the potential alternatives.
Bosco is another matter.
The crazed leopard hound cannot sleep knowing an armadillo shares the same ground as him. He hasn’t managed to catch and eat one yet (came close once), but, well, he hounds them until they move on for a less stressful home.
A month or so ago I noticed Bosco running around the pecan tree with the iron plants, diving in and out of them and generally carrying on like a goofy dog who smells something.
Rabbit. A rabbit was in there. She showed up in the front yard on quiet mornings, where Bosco couldn’t get at her. Sometimes she grazed out back while the dog was sleeping.
Last Friday afternoon while his mom was still at work, Nick and I went out to toss the baseball around while Emmy played on the swing – and she was there in the middle of the yard nibbling grass.
Boy and dog spotted rabbit at the same time. It didn’t go well.
The rabbit panicked and tried to get away from all of us, but instead slammed into the chain-link fence on the west side of the yard. She recovered and headed to the back of the yard and toward, I kind of hoped, the back gate, where she could squeeze under and escape.
Instead, Bosco ran parallel to her in the middle of the yard while she followed the fence line, cutting her off from the gate. She dove into a tangle of blackberry canes, hoping for a safe hideout. But the dog crashed through the brambles as if they weren’t there.
You could hear the rabbit squeal as he dragged her out of the bushes. Luckily, 7-year-old Nick’s view was obscured as Bosco shook his prey and broke her neck. It was over quickly.
Nick was pissed, on behalf of the rabbit.
I grabbed her by the back legs before Bosco could think about tearing her open. It was a “her,” and she was sleek and fat – quite possibly pregnant. I thought briefly about a plate of Hasenpfeffer, but I haven’t hunted for years and don’t have a good skinning knife anymore. And even if I did, cleaning the bunny in the vicinity of Nick and his little sister was out of the question.
So I walked down to the river with her, apologized for the inconvenience and tossed her in the water, where she would become a good meal for catfish or possibly a lucky alligator downstream.
I tried talking to Nick of Nature’s Balance and Dog Instincts and how Bosco felt it his job to protect the family against all threats, and how it’s hard to evaluate whether a strange animal is a Category Red threat or just a Category Light Green without bringing it down for a closer look.
It didn’t work at first, and Nick was so busy giving Bosco the Bad Eye that he wasn’t watching where I was throwing the ball.
Later, though, I heard him telling Emmy that for all Bosco knew, that rabbit could have been as dangerous as a copperhead, and he was just doing his job.
So it goes in a household where the kids’ only experience with putting meat on the table has to do with white paper packets from the grocery store.
If I still lived on a farm like my forebears, or still had time for hunting, this gap in the kids’ education would not need filling.
I made a mental note of the need to take Nick fishing much more often.
→ B.Dunn, Mar 16, 2008, 01 08 pm
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Snakebit
This actually happened before the pecan downpour, but I forgot about it until now, so for those of you who require life to follow some sort of chronological order, read the below post first and then come back up here.
I was out covering a county commissioner’s meeting for FortBendNow (they call it Commissioner’s Court in Texas) and stopped back at the house for a coke and a sandwich before the next appointment.
As I pulled up in the driveway, Bosco the crazed Catahoula trotted up to the gate. Yet, the normal tough-dog arrogance seemed to be missing from his gait. Then I noticed the grapefruit-sized swelling at his throat.
I got the truck inside the compound and lifted his chin to find some sort of puncture wound right in the middle of the swolen area. I thought maybe a Black Widow or Brown Recluse spider, and got him over to the vet within about a half-hour.
Dr. Ping declared it a snakebite – something with fangs (or at least one fang, because only one fang broke the skin). That ruled out coral snakes – one of which had crawled up on our front porch about three months ago.
Around here, that pretty much narrows it to either a copperhead or a cotton mouth. Copperheads are more common and that’s my best guess. It must’ve snagged him in the throat as he moved in to investigate, or as he tried to eat it. (I searched the grounds and found two snake skins plus three or four possible hideouts, but no snake body.)
The vet gave Bosco a shot of cortison, a shot of antibiotics and some take-home pills of same, plus prescribed some benedryl. All of this was to be given multiple times a day for the next 10 days, but after two days the swelling was gone, and after three days he acted like his normal self.
I sincerely hope that I never get snakebit, but if it were to happen, I would dearly love to be able to shake it off after three days.
‘Course Bosco eats out of a metal pan in the driveway and I don’t want to do that.
→ B.Dunn, Oct 16, 2006, 07 30 pm
Year of the Pecan
Last year was the Year of No Pecans. Usually, the four giant pecan trees and six medium trees produce a fair amount of nuts, but last year they were nearly barren.
I’ve heard old woodsman say that’s because we were fixin to get smashed by a big storm last year, which I guess would have been that hurricane that ended up turning right at the last minute.
This year, possibly in celebration of being spared the hurricane wrath, these trees are loaded with pecans. Bursting with pecans. To the extent that a huge branch flopped onto the front yard from about 70 feet, up at the top of an 80-year-old tree.
Nick and I examined it this morning. The big end of the branch was about six inches in diameter and appeared to be healthy. All I can figure is that the weight of all the pecans hanging on it was too much.
It’s been a big year for the figs, too. Usually I drape three or four rolls of bird netting over a big, sprawling turkey fig tree/bush in the back yard, which is enough to cover about a third of the lower branches, saving some for me and giving the birds access to the higher fruit.
This year I didn’t bother; there was so much fruit we just picked and ate whatever the birds and squirrels left us. I might’ve put up the bird netting anyway had we been in the mood to make preserves, but we’re so busy with FortBendNow that we haven’t had time to devote to home & garden pursuits. Or, as is obvious, to the blog.
Rain could be a contributing factor to the fruit & nut largesse. While a hot drought apparently still plagues people in parts of the Panhandle, down here in this part of the Texas Subtropics we’ve had plenty of rain, alternating now with 100-degree sunshine.
The St. Augustine grass goes crazy in weather like this, making weekly lawn mowings mandatory.
It’s also brought out the critters. The fire ants are having almost as good a year as the pecans. I’ve managed to eliminate most of the larger nests in the back yard proper, but there are huge nests, some nearly invisible, in the grass going down to the river. In the twilight, wearing sandals and staring off into the sunset is a sure sign you are about to receive a footfull of fire ant bites.
The neighbors know what it’s all about, but I wonder what strangers would think, if they were to observe from the hill back by the house while one of us hopped around cursing while the other helpfully picked the remaining ants off an ejected shoe.
Periods of heavy rain also can mean snakes. I found a coral snake on the front porch a few days ago – the first one I’ve seen on our property in three years. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything with me to kill it with. It tried to hide under some shrubs (they aren’t aggressive) and I was able to reach back and ring the doorbell while keeping sight of the snake.
C. handed me a decorative walking stick from Kenya, created for the tourist trade. Its ends were blunt, but I was able to shove the coral snake into the dirt behind its head. Even twisting and putting as much pressure as I could, it wasn’t enough to kill the snake because the dirt was too soft. After about a minute I raised the walking stick up to try to get a better angle, and this time caught the snake about halfway along its body. But the dirt still was too soft.
I tried to lift/scoop the snake onto the concrete porch where I could kill it, but it slipped away. I could see it below a bush, and tried to keep an eye on it while C. went for a hoe. But by the time she returned it was getting dark and the coral snake escaped.
I hoed all around the front shrubs, pulverizing the underbrush, and kicked up and killed what I call a rosy boa. I couldn’t tell what it was in the near dark and didn’t want to take a chance on handling a baby coral snake.
What I’m calling a rosy boa probably is something else. I’ve lived all over the country and I believe there are more varieties of snakes here than almost anyplace. What I’m talking about here is a small, gray and rose-colored harmless snake that likes to move around in semi-composted leaves in the shade. I hate killing any non-poisonous snake because they do a great job keeping rodents and insects at bay. This time it couldn’t be helped.
Coral snakes are the most poisonous of the dangerous snakes we have. Their venom is in the same class as that of cobras. Luckily, they aren’t aggressive and they don’t have fangs. In order to deliver their poison to a human, they would have to chew on you a little bit. They are a fairly small, beautiful snake, with a black head, a yellow band around the neck, usually another black band and then alternating red, yellow and black bands the length of the body.
Don’t play crocodile hunter with these guys.
→ B.Dunn, Aug 15, 2006, 08 08 am
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, 07 32 am