- We will make pizza for dinner. They love this, because not only do they get to help make the dough, but once it's risen I give them each their own hunk of dough to stretch and shape. They get to make their own pizza, with whatever toppings they want on it.
- We will make pancakes for breakfast. K3 and Toad measure and stir together the ingredients, and I do the actual cooking. There will be regular circle pancakes, but there will also be shaped pancakes--turtles for Toad and for K3 it varies. Typically it's Mickey Mouse heads, but this weekend it was bunnies.
These are givens because they request these two things every time they spend the night. Each is something I did once, and apparently they enjoyed it enough that they want to have it again and again and again.
This time, I had an additional food related activity planned. But that would come after we spent some time outside on Saturday morning.
And on Saturday we woke up to a surprise that would require our attention right after breakfast. Not a surprise that DH or I had planned, that's for sure. You see, early last week something got into my coop overnight despite the closed and latched doors. It killed a chicken (thankfully only one). So, last week I got out our large live trap, set it up near the front of the coop, and baited it with that dead chicken. Tied into the back of the trap with baling twine around it's feet, so that whatever critter came along could not steal it out of the trap without getting caught.
The first night, we caught (and disposed of) a decent sized raccoon. The second night, we caught (and disposed of) a slightly larger raccoon. Which is what I suspected, as I'd seen raccoon tracks in the snow around my coop the week before. Raccoons are not welcome around my barn and coop; if caught there they receive the death sentence. They need to stay out in the woods.
The third night, nothing ventured into our trap. The fourth night was Friday night. And we woke up on Saturday to discover this:
Uh oh. We'd caught a skunk. Skunks are a lot trickier to shoot than raccoons are. When I catch a coon, I walk up to the cage (aka the death chamber), stick the end of the .22 through the wire, and dispatch the coon with a shot between the eyes. With a skunk, you can't get that close. Not without getting a stinky souvenir to show for it. So, the two times we've caught skunks in the past, they've gotten a stay of execution and a ride out to the woods where they are released. This is accomplished by walking up to the skunk in the trap with an old flannel sheet held up in front of me, so I am not seen (ie no predator threat). Then I wrap the trap in the sheet, and load it into the tractor bucket. I drive it out to the edge of the woods, set the trap on the ground, take the sheet off the front end of the trap (leaving the rest of the trap covered), and prop the door open with a chunk of wood. Then I walk away, or, if the skunk doesn't exit the trap right away, drive back to the house for a few hours.
That is the technique I planned to use on Saturday. Except that Toad, K3 and DD2 wanted to see the skunk. And since DD2 has experience (from her internship at the small animal rehab in 2018) with handling young skunks, she walked K3 and Toad within about eight feet of the trap so they could get a fairly close up look at the skunk. I have to admit, it was cute, with a white stripe down it's face and a white patch on the top of it's head and no white anywhere else on it's body.
The wrapping in a sheet and transporting to the woods didn't go so smoothly though. Because just as I had the trap wrapped and was about to get the tractor out of the barn, DH came roaring up on the 4-wheeler, towing our wood hauler trailer. He thought that would be better to carry the trap with, and we could bring in a load of firewood after releasing the skunk. The noise however, startled the skunk, and it did spray. So now I have a smelly sheet and a trap that is slightly skunky.
skunk transport
(kind of makes me think of a casket on a caisson)
door propped, ready for skunk release
walking away to wait
observing from a distance
It took a while, and we were over at the woodpile in the corner of the field when the skunk finally decided it was curious enough to walk out of the trap. Once out, it didn't hesitate about heading into the woods for cover.
skunk in the woods
After we had a good size load of firewood on the trailer, and K3 and Toad were tired of climbing on the woodpile and logs, we headed back to the house for our next activity. Making chocolate dipped pretzel sticks!
They sure had fun with that! We of course had to eat some before they left this little place here. And we packed some up to take to DD1 and Honorary Son's house, as well as some more to take home to their parents. Although I suspect they will remember the skunk adventure longer than they will remember dipping pretzels in molten chocolate!
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