WILDLIFE CONTROL
We once met a couple who only went by their motorcycling handles: “Drifter” and “Shadow”. This spawned a discussion as to what names we would use if we were low-riders. M announced, without a moment’s hesitation, as though it was inarguably obvious, that he would be “Jaguar" and I would be…"Badger". He was surprised to find I was not in excited about this.[1] He thought, wrongly, that this was a complimentary choice.
M: Because badgers are small, but fiesty.
Me: Have you ever actually seen a badger?
Turns out he had. On YouTube. To convince me I should embrace my inner badger-ness, and in an attempt to dig himself out of the badger hole, he shared his source material: The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger. As is often the case with long standing couples, we can sit side-by-side, watching the same exact thing, and have totally opposing interpretations. The general take-away for M was that badgers are “bad ass”. I, meanwhile, was more focused on the number of times the narrator said: “Eeeeew! SO Nass-ty!!!”.[2] We did agree that badgers are fierce. But I assume M was of thinking the ‘boss woman’ Tyra Banks/Ru Paul variety of fierce. As opposed to the snarling fangs, rip your face off image I was rolling with.
While I still refuse to acknowledge any affinity with diabolical super rodents, I admit that M may have cause to see a connection. Like it or not, I seem to be something of a pied piper for various kinds of ‘varmint’. At every one of my homes over the years, I have been welcomed by some form of rodent/gopher/weasel. I spent much of my formative years at a place fittingly called “Ground Hog Hill”. I don’t think this shared history brought me and gopher-kind closer together. My groundhog memories consist primarily of DEAD groundhog memories. These being primarily “gifts” from our (pre-gentrification) golden retriever. He would shake them until their innards were all gathered into the head and toe areas like an old beanie baby. This was such a constant occurrence that his ear flaps got so swollen the vet pressed them flat using multi coloured buttons, sewn front to back.
When I moved out on my own, and into student housing, the ‘rodent du jour’ was worse: Rats.[4] I can’t watch “Ratatouille” without getting shivers. The Fire Swamp scene from “Princess Bride” is out of the question. Rodents of Unusual Size was just too close to home, literally. Once, I was walking up to our house and one of my housemates was on all fours peering under a parked car, imploring “Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty”. A “kitty”-sized rat ran right through her arms and legs…then into a hole in the side of our house. Meanwhile, over at M’s house, one of his sublets slept with a tennis racket beside his bed – after having had a rodent wake him up as it scurried over his face. As a post-grad lifestyle upgrade we got a cat, “Jesse”, who would, in theory, keep the rodent quotient at bay. It had the opposite effect. Jesse was an indoor/outdoor cat. He was also a prolific Hunter…correction, he was a prolific Gatherer. He had no interest in his prey as food. They were strictly for entertainment. Unfortunately, Jesse had ADHD. After a brief game of Whack-a-Mole, he would lose interest and wander away for a cat nap, leaving the mice to hide (or, better/worse, die) all around the house.
When we moved to our first house (and had rethought the benefits of a free-flowing cat door) we were finally rat and mice free. Only to discover the joys of their flying cousins: Bats. The first bat was dispatched using the tried-and-true Squash racket approach. The second bat was discovered by the heating technician and killed when he slammed the furnace door on it. He literally RAN from our house and refused to return. For years the entire staff at our heating company called me “Bat Lady”.[5] You learn many things when taking on the care if your first home, including that apparently if you have multiple bats in your house, it means you have an “infestation”. Of all the things you’d rather not have, an “infestation” is high on the list.
When we next moved, C was a toddler. She would sit on the kitchen floor and stare out the glass door into the backyard. For multiple days in a row, she kept talking about the “Bee-VAH”. I would explain, in condescending adult-to-toddler voice:
“No dear. It’s not s beaver. It’s a bunny…or a cat…or a squirrel…or a racoon…”
We live in the central core of a fair-sized city, after all. And C was still building her vocabulary. This war of wills/words went on for some time. Until one day, I look through the back door, and…
“Holy Shit! A BEAVER!”
Sitting right on the other side of the glass from C, basically the same size, is what looked like a beaver. It was like discovering that your child’s imaginary friend was real. Once I overcame the shock, I realized it was an oversized, most likely very pregnant, groundhog – blithely munching on my Asters while C babbled to it through the window. Maybe I wasn’t over the shock after all, because I had the truly terrible parenting idea to open the door and let our dog out. With all three girls watching, rapt, through the window, waving and grinning at C’s special, special friend “Bee-VAH”, I swung the door wide and said something to the effect of:
“Sic ‘Em, Kujo!”
Only at the point of no return did it dawn on me that this was an all-caps bad idea. BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA!!! Too late, my childhood memories of groundhog beanie babies came roaring back. Fortunately, our dog at the time had no clue what he was meant to do, and Bee-VAH escaped, less a small tuft of tail fur.
It wasn’t until our next home that we met our critter-match. We had invested in a 10 foot deer fence for our vegetable garden.[6] After weeks and months of tending the garden, just as it was starting to come to harvest, we wake one morning to find it totally marauded. Not eaten - just wrecked. It looked like a gang of Warthogs had had an ecstasy-stoked rave in there. Turns out it was a single Fisher. I understand I am sharing the world with other creatures. I don’t take issue with the deer transforming my Hosta into celery sticks, but this Fisher was just an A-hole. Or, at the very least, really picky. Goldilocks style, it appeared to have picked every fruit and vegetable, taken a single bite, and tossed them in rejection. Then, to make sure its opinion of our garden was clear, it stomped down all the stalks and dug up all the flowers. We (and by we, I mean I) decided to live trap it. To live trap a Fisher you need an oversized trap, which we borrowed from our farmer-friend G.
“You will know if you’ve caught it because it will sound like a screaming baby”, G says to M who has been assigned Fisher-removal duty.
Further: “Don’t put your fingers in the cage or it will bite them off.” Ok, check.
And also: “Except, the release latch is a bit broken so you will have to reach in to release it.”
Right - so no fingers in the cage except for when you must put your whole hand in the cage. M is looking increasing less enthused. But I think, justifiably, he is thinking there is minimal chance we will catch it. This turns out to be a safe bet because when I Google “What-Bait-Trap-Fisher” the response is: “Fresh Beaver meat”. So, to catch one large rodent, first we have to catch an even larger rodent?? M, relieved, was officially off the Fisher disposal hook. Fortunately, the Fisher moved on the next year, or we would have had to do a beaver cull.
Given this history, it comes as no real surprise that we were welcomed to the home for our latest life-phase by a Marmot living in our backyard. In all our previous houses, we vanquished our critter mascots. This time, contrary to advice of every one of our local friends (who without exception made a face and said “You don’t want that”), we are embracing our rodent-esque friend. I admit that the blurb in our Nature Guide, “Marmots are a harem-based burrowing animal that live in a large network of tunnels”, does not sound good for our landscaping plans. But clearly, it is meant to be. And better a Marmot than a “Nastyass” badger.
There’s only room for one badger in this household.
Plus, who knows? Maybe for our next stop we’ll move to South America and adopt a Capybara.
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[1] For the record: I am a Moma Bear. Clearly.
[2] I point out to the court of spousal disputes that the name of the video itself is “Nastyass” Badger. Not saying M is wrong. Just saying I am right.
[3] Yes, I understand that a badger is in the weasel family and weasels are not technically rodents because their teeth do not continue to grow over their lifetime (this being the distinguishing, disgusting, characteristic of rodents). Nor are gophers. But I maintain it is fair to lump them together in the “Varmint” category.
[4] See Students Houses.
[5] Only to be replaced by “Pig Lady” because our technician’s kid played hockey against C’s U6 team, “The Ice Hogs”.
[6] And spent hours building raised boxes, composting, planting, weeding…all for a handful of beans that we could have bought from the farm down the road for a buck.
Note: I sometimes think that I am manifesting events by writing these stories. I was in the middle of writing Storm Chasers when I got caught up in a hurricane. Then, I had already started writing about critter invasions when we moved to a new home, only to discover “Yoho” the Marmot. Curious…