Critter Count

The battle against the critters continues

I forgot to remove the rat trap this morning (set near the bird feeder at night). Later in the morning, I heard a lot of birds squawking around the deck, so I went to check it out. There were 4 blue jays in the shrubs making a racket. Then I noticed one blue jay in the rat trap. Oops - that was definitely unintentional.

Later, while eating lunch, I noticed a lot of squirrels out and about. I walked outside (with gun) to check it out. Immedittely, one squirrel started chattering at me from his perch. I knock him down with one shot. After hitting him, I turned to see 2 squirrels on the deck running right toward me, as if they were charging me. So I went back into the house, to my improvised hunting blind, and shot one of them - it was just sitting on the railing. This all happened within 5 minutes time. Sad thing is, they were both incapacitated but neither died right away, so when I came back later for body retrieval, I had to secretly take the gun to the river bank to finish them off. One crawled back along the river bank into a large clump of poison ivy, so I am leaving him there.

I think I will take a break for a while. Hopefully, the herds have been thinned.

Current tally...
Squirrels: 11 hits, 7 confirmed kills, 2 maimed (never found)
Raccoons:2 captured and relocated
Rats:0
Birds:1 caught (in squirrel trap) and released
1 blue jay caught in the rat trap (dead)