Trail Cam Diary
Two years ago, we planted some sweetcorn and had an excellent stand growing. Then something started foraging among the ears and I was pretty sure it was raccoons so I used the opportunity to buy something I had always wanted, a trail camera. I installed it and soon found out indeed it was raccoons...
... with the help of their lookout, Mr. Opossum. I'm not sure what he was doing out there. Perhaps they eat sweetcorn too.
Anyway, we decided back then after we got just a few ears out of a couple hundred ears, that we would just buy our sweetcorn from then on. Many grow it around here and it is easy to find in street corners being sold off the back of pickup trucks when in season for very reasonable prices. I removed the batteries from my trail camera and stuck it in a cabinet in my office and pretty much forgot about it.
Flash forward to right after I made the decision to electrify our garden fence but before I had received the charger, I thought about the trail camera and set it up near our sour cherry tree looking back at a corner of our garden. I suspected I would see a lot of deer and sure enough, I did get a number of pictures of them over the ensuing week.
I know the deer haven't been in the garden sense I put up the fence since I have no longer seen any hoof prints and some of the daikon radishes that I planted last fall as a cover crop until they were decimated by the deer, are returning as volunteers in the untilled portion of the garden waiting for our summer crops to be planting. In fact, they are doing so well, we dug some up and planted them in a row to see if we could raise some daikons for personal consumption.
Other than deer and lots of pictures of my mowing the lawn and visiting the greenhouse to water plant starts, there was only one other picture of interest and is shown above. I'm not sure what I'm looking at. We have in the past, had a female fox raise her kits in the recesses of the ditch behind our house. Possibly that is what I'm seeing. Or perhaps it was a deer bedding down for the night though I discount that a bit since there was only one single photo and not a series of them as I would expect. I have heard a cat meowing once or twice at night for a few nights right about then so perhaps it is a cat. The most logical explanation however is that it is conclusive proof of a small alien doing preparations for future kidnapping and anal probing of the mammals that live in the house beyond the garden.
I think next I will put it looking towards the opposite corner of the garden for a week and see what I find.
You've got me beat. Or at least it has.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, just last night I saw a solid dark gray cat on my back deck. Perhaps it wasn't aliens after all.
DeleteInteresting. Could it be another possum? It has dark legs like a possum and looks like it has a snout. My second vote would be cat.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about a possum and now that you mention it, it does look like a possum. They are very alien-like!
DeleteI think Steve is right about the possum. The snout gives him/her away! I do love animals, but they can be a nuisance around flowers or crops.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why a possum didn't cross my mind when I saw that picture. They are everywhere as evidenced by the picture above in my post.
DeleteTrail cams show some interesting stories.
ReplyDeleteHopefully it has more of them to tell.
DeleteLooks like a pig to me. We have a wild pig problem in parts of Oahu. They can be quite ferocious so I m glad they haven't been spotted in urban Honolulu.
ReplyDeleteWhile there are wild pigs here on the mainland, I have never seen one within 250 miles of where I live. They mostly reside far down south and possible far to the east.
DeleteCall me a southern redneck, but I just can't put an "O" in front of the word possum. Alien anal probe. That sends shivers through me.
ReplyDeleteI won't call you a redneck because I would have to call myself one for nobody up here uses the "O" either.
DeleteEd, my vote is a fox (or coyote, if you have such critters about) given the rabbit issue you related earlier. Prey always attracts predators.
ReplyDeleteWe do have both but now that Steve pointed it out, I'm almost certain it is a possum.
DeleteLegs sure look like a fox. We have a Wolf in the neighborhood. My sister in law got it on the trail cam. They can be very interesting!
ReplyDeleteWe do have foxes around though I rarely see them. Maybe five years ago, one raised a kit on the far knoll of our property and I would see them out sunning themselves through a window. But as soon as I stepped outside, they would disappear into the woods.
DeleteYeti.
ReplyDeleteDwarf yeti!
DeleteI remember having to catch a smaller opossum in our garage in order to take him to the forest preserve. We put him in an open box and on the way to the woods, I looked in and he snarled viciously at me. Wow! He looked so tame before that. I wonder if it could give you a nasty bite.
ReplyDeleteYou really have a lot of wildlife in your area. Your trail cam was a lot of fun.
They certainly have a mouth full of teeth on them. I always think they look sort of prehistoric. Back on the farm, we used to charge them so that they played dead, put a box over them and then slide a cookie sheet underneath the box and transport them elsewhere.
DeleteI would go with the alien theory, myself. Small vegetarian aliens.
ReplyDelete