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Our alley cat (her name is Ferrill,
pronounced
feral
) produced three kittens in April. Ever since
she quit lactating, we've been trying to catch her so we
can take her to the vet for spaying. She's fast and nimble,
so we seldom even get a hand on her. A couple of times,
we've grasped her, but she twists and claws so fiercely
that we haven't been able to hold her for long enough to
shove her into a transport cage.
We were out of ideas, so I called the Arkansas Valley Humane Society. They suggested a live trap, and they would rent us one for only $1 a day.
AVHS is a fine organization, but it's 25 miles away in Buena Vista, and I didn't want to drive up there if I could avoid it. Gasoline is expensive, and some of the money may well go to a nation that harbors terrorists, or even to Bush campaign contributors, and the Republicans must be getting through to me on the importance of values and respecting them in daily life.
So I called around town, looking for a live trap to rent. The vet's office didn't have any, but said the Salida Police might. It took several days to learn that the Salida Police didn't. That made me feel better. Any police department which needs the better part of a week to determine whether it has some live traps in inventory is unlikely to be a threat to our rights and liberties.
At AVHS, all the small traps had been rented, so we got a big one -- a galvanized mesh parallelepiped about a foot square and four feet long. As recommended, we baited it with peanut butter on the trip bar and canned cat food at the back.
The first night, we put it atop the picnic table, one of Ferrill's favorite haunts. The trap was empty the next morning. I put it on the patio Tuesday night.
I rose before dawn Wednesday, and looked out the kitchen window as soon as there was enough light. The good news was that the trap had caught something. The bad news was that it was bigger than our cat, sported white stripes on shiny black fur, and lifted its bushy tail to demonstrate its annoyance, something my nose noticed about 10 seconds later.
What to do with a trapped skunk? It was too early to call friends or the Division of Wildlife, so I poked around the Internet. The most common advice: Get an old tarp or rug. Hold it before you, so that it's what get sprayed. Throw it over the trap. The resulting darkness will settle the skunk. After a few minutes, put the tarp-wrapped cage in the bed of a pickup, drive about 10 miles out of town, and release the beast.
I don't have a pickup, and this didn't sound like good cargo for the inside of my Blazer. I planned to call a friend with a pickup once the hour got more civilized, but in the interim, I found more skunk data on the Web.
The Colorado State University Extension Service advised that in our state, there are only two things you can legally do with a trapped skunk: kill it, or release it where you caught it. Pickup rides to the boondocks are illegal.
Aside from the illegality of discharging a firearm inside the city limits, I'm not a good shot. Besides, skunks have tiny heads, although this one's was big enough for a mouth with many sharp teeth. It reared and hissed every time I stepped onto the patio, and I hastened back inside when it started to turn around.
Finally I grabbed an old rug from the shed, held it like a body shield during my approach, and covered the trap. After making sure that our stupid dog (after her third skunking, you'd think she would have learned about certain small mammals) could not get near the spot, I opened the trap door and ran inside. Half an hour later, I gingerly lifted the rug to see that the skunk had departed.
Several days thereafter, my contractor friend Kirby Perschbacher came by with a load of firewood. I told him how I'd almost called him to borrow a pickup, before I learned that the excursion would have been illegal.
Too bad you read that,
he said. Because there
must be plenty of good skunk habitat up in those new gated
developments a few miles out of town. It would have been an
honor to help you relocate that critter.
We wondered if that's why Colorado now forbids the transport of captured skunks, and shifted our conversation to more pleasant topics. George Bush was slipping in the polls, the apple tree had produced a bumper crop, and there was sufficient rye whiskey on hand for me to forget, however briefly, that Ferrill must still be caught. Somehow.
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