As I’ve mentioned in the past, we’ve got groundhogs around our neighborhood. My wife hates them with a passion, since they eat everything she tries to garden - tomatoes, flowers, peppers, pumpkins, have all fallen victim.
I bought a new havahart trap this year, and put it out this weekend, baited with carrots & broccoli. This afternoon, my wife looked out the window to see a skunk in the trap, and our next door neighbor releasing it! She just walked right into our yard, no phone call, no knocking on the front door to see if we’re home. Just used a long stick to open the trap.
My wife’s in a bit of a quandry. She and this neighbor have always had a cool relationship. However, she’s actually relieved that she didn’t have to open the trap & let the skunk go. But if it had been the actual groundhog in the trap, my wife would have been furious at her for releasing it, and the neighbor would probably now be undergoing the same fate the groundhog would (if you want to believe that’s a long drive in the country & a release into the woods, go right ahead). We’re waiting a day to see if the neighbor comes clean & tells us what she did, or if she just thinks she got away with something.
That is not cool. Not cool at all. You don’t mess with stuff on other people’s yards unless it’s life and death (and a skunk in a trap doesn’t qualify). I’d have a chat with the neighbour and let her know that you’d appreciate her minding her own business.
Was her house in the waft path of the skunk’s spray? Perhaps that’s why she let it out. I would go talk to her starting with “Thanks for letting the skunk out of the trap, I wasn’t looking forward to having to do this.” and then touch on the subject of the groundhogs.
From the thread title, I immediately thought of the old Charles Addams cartoon where Morticia answers the doorbell to find a deliveryman carrying 2 barred cages, one holding Pugsley and the other Wednesday.
“Darling, it’s the children - home from summer camp!”
I can sort of understand the neighbor’s train of thought: “I’m sure that’s not what they’re trying to catch, and holy crap, that thing’s going to stink up the whole neighborhood if it gets agitated. For everybody’s sake, I’d better let it out.” There’s no evidence that she would have released the groundhog.
On the other hand, your wife was obviously home at the time, so a knock on the door first would have been the neighborly thing to do before she took matters into her own hands. My vote is the neighbor had the right intentions but went about things in the wrong manner.
Agree with Wheelz, I don’t really see that there’s any ill intent there. I’m fairly sure she would’ve left the trap alone had it contained a groundhog, but then I don’t know your neighbor.
The trap was well away from her house - at least 150 ft. You can’t even see it from her yard - I suspect she heard the skunk howling or something. So she wasn’t doing it to protect her own house from skunk odor.
My wife did call her and ask what she was doing - neighbor said she just didn’t want the skunk to die in the heat (it was in the 90s that day). My wife asked why she didn’t call or knock on the door first - neighbor had no reply. My wife told her in no uncertain terms not to touch our trap again.
A while later, neighbor came over to apologize, and offered some cat food since she heard that was good skunk bait. My wife told her we don’t care about the skunk, we’re trying to catch the groundhog. Turns out the groundhog is eating neighbors plants too, so she’s on board with trapping it, as long as she doesn’t have to know its final fate.
Thanks to you, I’m now referring to my neighbor as Admiral Akbar.
Catching groundhogs is up there with catching gophers. And I’ve battled gophers for a long time. Just give it up and move. 'Cause here’s something no one ever tells you the gopher ALWAYS wins.
Mandatory link to The Rodenator, first discovered after the original Evil Killer Nazi Groundhog Thread of days of yore. It makes me wish I had a few varmints just for the fun of using one of these.
I had a family of groundhogs that was chewing my porch up. I got one of those traps and set it under the bushes right by the steps. Unfortunately, the 6-8 yr. old boys in the neighborhood noticed it and would mess with it while I was at work. I didn’t get a straight answer as to whether they were letting the groundhogs out or just playing with the trap. I told them that I had already trapped the mother (true) and released her in the park (true) and that if they didn’t stop messing with the trap I wouldn’t be able to catch the babies and release them where they could find thier mom. They never touched the trap again and I caught and released 6 more.
This was almost downtown of a good sized city, BTW.
