…the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth.

This year has been a busy one when it comes to backyard activity. Especially in the furry kind. One frequent visitor and all its relatives is George… our friendly neighborhood groundhog.  

In the past few years we have caught a few. George I and George II.  Always with a relocation after harmlessly trapping them with our neighbor’s trap. He too attempted to snare George in the past, but had more luck with squirrels and skunks, which were also relocated.  

Why the trapping you my ask? Well George likes to munch on our flowers and produce, which Aniko works very hard to grow. Not only for curb appeal, but to feed the family.  For our family, the humans, not for the furry friends of the yard.  

It started with building a salad coup, see post and video here. At the time it was built against the local trash panda, but for all we know it might have been George back then already.  Then this year I added even more fortification to our garden, by running fencing completely around the perimeter.  This has greatly helped, against all sorts of furries. However, anything outside of this fencing was still game. And wouldn’t you know it, George took full advantage.  Not only would there be complete plants munched down to the roots, but boroughs dug all over the place, especially around the house foundation. 

So back out came the trap… and this year we have been busy. 4 trappings and humane relocations down to the river which is about 2-3 km away.  An area that has plenty of vegetation and all the water front property George (and descendants) can ask for.  Every year we catch Daisy and her family (skunks) but those we release back into the wild locally. They tend to keep other animals abbey and are not much into plants. 

Hopefully, we are done for the year… as each time we have caught a George, they always got smaller and smaller. I believe we have united the entire family down by the river by now.