SHOP VERMIN

[uncle harry]

My RENT-A-GRUNT (a very dear friend who I pay for his help) & I assisted and/or watched as a crew of mudjackers attacked my #2 shop slab. They drilled a grid of about 20 inch and a half holes through the 4 inch 16 X 26 slab and proceeded to fill voids beneath. We helped them reposition about a dozen machines and cabinets in a couple of "musical chairs" events so that they could introduce a family of woodchucks to about three cubic yards of mortar. All of this took about 4 hours at a bargain cash cost of a mere $1400 that I might have enjoyed having more shop toys with. The subterranean "guests" inflicted this damage in a matter of about 1 week last summer. Now perhaps I can keep my Harrison M300 level lathe level again.

CHAPTER 2

Oh joy, oh rapture..............now that my uninvited woodchuck guests have been displaced I have been less-than-pleasantly surprised to discover that skunks have invaded a different out building where I store components and materials. I might just deffer to the professionals on this one !

 

[Nutfarmer]

Just don't use a live trap to catch the shunks. Don't laugh had a friend in town that caught one. He then called animal control to pick it up. You guessed it ,they wanted nothing to do with it. Next call was to pest control companys. Cheapest quote was 500 dollars. After a good laugh i finally put a burlap sack over the trap and with a long pole moved the trap . Relocated the poor skunk to the river bank on the farm. Burnt the burlap sack and no one would use the farm truck for quite a while.

 

[Dhal22]

I love beagles. When I was a kid, we had a problem with our milk delivery. The glass jugs went missing. The milk man swore he left them.
I'm off to school, mom is watching the front porch, sure enough, a beagle that lives down the street stole the milk jugs.
He dragged the bottles to his master's house about three doors down.

Back to the thread, I would not want to tackle any cornered varmint that has teeth and claws.

I saw a beagle trotting down the sidewalk with a newspaper in his mouth many years ago. I didn't think anything of it but as I was driving by I watched him make the turn and head up his driveway. At the front door was a pile of newspapers.........

 

[BGHansen]

We have a 64-acre parcel in mid-Michigan, have about 5/8 of a mile of river bank and 50 yards of creek that dumps into the river. Noticed an Eaton County Drain Commissioner pick-up in our driveway last fall. He came to follow up on a complaint I'd made (I didn't make a call) about active beavers on our property. I knew nothing about it, don't walk that area of the property very often. Sure enough, they'd pretty much dammed up the creek where it meets with the river.

I had the option of trapping them myself or they'd bring in their guy. We had no interest in the pelts, so their guy set some traps and got them. The trapper said it was a food cache, not a dam. It was removed with an excavator. Didn't get photos of that, but here are some of what the beavers were gnawing on. Fortunately, it's a 1/4 mile from my shop!

Bruce

Our spread in mid-Michigan. Dark blue line is the creek that dumps into the Thornapple River


Entrance on our property to the creek. Pretty much EVERY tree 8" diameter and smaller within 15' of the bank was gnawed down by the beavers (may they rest in peace).

 

[Nutfarmer]

Here we have to worry about beaver in the levees. They can burrow into the levees to the point they can breach the levees in high water. There never seam to be a balance between what the environments and the levee district. Love seeing the beaver ,but it is scary when the river is at flood and the beaver burrow starts flowing water.