The first snowfall always shatters my illusion of privacy. I go out, the morning after, to discover that it’s Grand Varmint Central out there. There are rabbits criss-crossing the driveway. There are raccoons (still!) trying to get in the chicken coop. There is the occasional wild turkey. There is a coyote, or maybe the neighbor’s [...]
There’s something I don’t understand. Okay, there are a lot of things I don’t understand, but I’m going to limit this discussion to one thing in particular, and it isn’t quantum mechanics. It’s why people seem to want to believe that some traits are hard-coded in our genes, while others aren’t. Usually, it’s the crappy [...]
The raccoons continue their attempt to gnaw their way into the chicken coop, and I’ve had about enough of it. The idea that a passel of varmints, fattened up on turkey feed, could one night breach our defenses and snack on our flock just as they’ve started laying is too much for me. So I have [...]
It was several weeks back that Kevin and I noticed that one of the battens on the outside of the chicken coop had gotten a pretty thorough gnawing. A good swath of wood was missing, up to almost three feet off the ground, and there were unmistakable teeth marks. Until now, we’ve had a pretty [...]
It’s a banner year for chipmunks. And no wonder. The boneheads who own the property they live on seem finally to have figured out how to create a chipmunk-friendly environment. They scatter cracked corn on the ground for their chickens. They’ve actually managed to grow a few nice tomatoes, just at ground level. And they [...]
This year, in planning our garden, we made a mistake. Surprising, eh? We planted a lot of winter squash. We picked two varieties: Delicata, and a giant kind I don’t know the name of but what we call Sasquash. We chose Delicata because it is supposed to taste very good. We chose Sasquash because it [...]
It’s very disconcerting to get up to pee in the middle of the night and find a wild animal in your house. It’s not like it was a tiger or anything – it was just a raccoon – but still. As I stumbled out of the bathroom, half asleep, I saw a small furry thing [...]
I know what you were thinking. You were thinking, “Gosh, I’ll go over to Starving off the Land and see if Tamar’s posted yet more pictures of varmints!” Well, it’s your lucky day.
In the summer, setting up the Varmintcam’s a crapshoot. I know we’ve got varmints galore, but I have no idea where I’m likely to be able to catch them in the act. In winter, though, their tracks in the snow are a dead giveaway. I spotted little pawprints near the oyster shells we tossed behind [...]
We keep a pile of clam and oyster shells behind our compost set-up, and it’s a big attraction for local varmints. About a week ago, we tossed out a particularly smelly pile of shells, many with adductor muscles or bits of body attached to them. I thought this would be a good opportunity to catch [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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