Unwelcome Visitor

Things have been a bit quiet lately since I have been concentrating on getting Peg and Jessie in shape. I decided to wait to hunt Peg again until I could pick up a "made" hunting hawk to perhaps demonstrate to her how a real hawk does it. She has been flying like a Butterfly rather than a serious Harris Hawk. Peg really has me worried, after all this time she still is barely able to fly up 56 feet to grab her food off the lure. Jessie in the mean time is up to 350 feet in two and a half circles. In the mean time I have raised her weight as high as 922 grams in an effort to try to figure out where she is the strongest. Perhaps she was at an abnormally low weight when I got her. She weighed 800 grams on arrival.

 

Sylvester

Duck season starts this coming weekend, but Jessie isn't strong enough  as yet, so we will wait a week and see if I can get some more muscle on her before we try wild quarry. She could catch a duck, but I want her pitch higher and she cannot do that without the muscle.

I decided that since Sylvester's (the new bird) owner was not going to be able to make the trip over, that I would just go get him, and was getting ready for the trip when Karen  told me that there was something getting into the "cat house" ( outside cats living in the tack room) and eating all the cat food, and crapping in the corner. She also told me that Curly indicated that there was something there now, so he and I went to look. There was a tarp lying over some stuff in the corner, and Curly indicated that he was there. I had already asked Karen if she thought it could be a Skunk, since there were only two choices, Skunk and Raccoon. She said that she hadn't smelled anything, but not being the trusting sort, I made Curly get down and back just in case. I started pulling the tarp off and there he was, a nice and big fluffy Skunk. We backed off and he got nervous enough to squirt a little bit, but we were both out of range and we got away unscathed. Unlike some people Skunk scent doesn't really bother me, but it does piss me off.

I put Curly up, and got a shotgun and a can of "Wasp Spray". When I got back out there the Skunk was back in its bed that it had made. I stepped in and gave him a shot of Wasp Spray. You know those guys can dish it out, but don't seem to be able to take it. I kept hoping I could run him out and blast him with the shotgun. He didn't want to leave, so back in I go, ran him out of his bed, and hit him in the face with the wasp spray again as he ducked behind one of the feed barrels. I left the door open and set a live trap and went to bed, as I wanted to get an early start for the 460 mile trip the next day. I checked the trap before I left and found that it had been sprung, but nothing in it.

I managed the trip in 12 hours, and we find that the Skunk has moved out. I will set a live trap outside the door tonight to see if he comes back.