Hot Rods UNINVITED OVERNIGHT VISITOR IN THE SHOP

First it's all you guys doing fantastic work on your vehicles that makes me want to sell everything and take up a new hobby! Now it's the garage visitors. I only get chipmonks. CHIPMONKS! Not even worth mentioning... well just a wee bit

 

Our municipality actually relocates opossums here to help combat problematic rat populations in some areas. We see them every once in a while but they are never a problem. I never leave the shop doors open unless I'm there now, ever since the squirrels filled the Chrysler Imperial mufflers on my Model A with acorns.

 

Tommy Boy (4/10) Movie CLIP - The Deer Wakes Up (1995) HD - YouTube

 

At least your shop is now tick free!

 

Very good point. Opossums will raid rat & mouse nests. They're furry friends
Next time acorns pop out of the tailpipes, think of Mr. Opossum.

Joe

 

Or spotted owl.

 

Snakes I hate snakes , I have killed 2 in my garage . My Dad , raises cane with me for killing black snakes until I ask him “ do you want them ? I’ll bag the Bastards up a pond deliver to you ! “ strange he never answered .

Nothing to do with car stuff , but during the working years we would get high pressure pipe lengths from storage fields , in Texas . They would be full of rattle snakes , plenty of the pipeliners would kill, skin and eat them on the job for lunch or dinner . I always got the question “ want some ? “ My answer. “ Nope , not as long as Kroger’s ( large grocery store chain ) is open for business !

 

I had a coyote pit bull mix. I live in the country. She would wander off and always return home with some friend in tow. Beside Maxie I’ve had deer, raccoons, opossums, cats, dogs, chipmunks, chickens, 2 wild turkeys and fox in the garage helping me and then mooching a meal and leaving. Nobody ever growled at each other. The one thing I did find unnerving though was when she brought home the neighbors cranky old bull. I liked to shit myself when he put his nose up my ass. I did pee a little and scream like a little girl. But it must have been one of his good days because he did not damage anything this time. The time before when he was over he spent a good hour kicking the shit out of one of my golfkarts. Totaled it. This winter one of his cows comes over to play with my dog and then wants to be my house pet and wants to come in the house! Another time I had he’s small heard of cattle about 50 of them over for dinner. Didn’t have to mow grass or weeds for the summer that year. I had hand raised a raccoon and if you did not pay enough attention to him he would walk up to you and tug on your pant leg. When you’d look down at him he’d put out his little hand for a shake. I kind of miss old Fred.

 

That’s a common misconception- they actually taste like manatee

 

When I lived in LA, I extended my garage with 2x4s and had only a blue tarp for a garage door. Needless to say the possums figured it out and moved in. They left turd all along the baseboards behind the welder and other stuff, it was nasty. Not to mention that uneasy feeling you get when you are working and see something out of the corner of your eye. The biggest problem was the skunks that made a den under the base of my staircase. After filling in the opening with dirt and bricks didn't work, I called animal control. They said," you're on your own, we don't do skunks" I finally decided to put some concentrated Malathion in a Windex bottle and douse the den with it. It out stunk the skunks and they left, never to return. Chili powder worked to discourage the possums.

 

When I retired and moved out to cattle country, wildlife took on a whole new meaning. Our house was an unoccupied foreclosure and plenty of the local critters had moved in. There's a thicket of sagebrush behind my shop and several times I've walked out the back door of my shop to use the men's bush and ran headlong into a deer. Coyotes pass through at night on their way to dine on my neighbor's chickens and cats. We've also got wild turkeys (100's of 'em), bobcats, rattlesnakes and a million gophers (anyone have Bill Murray's phone number?)
The rattlesnakes are the most scarry, they blend in too well and they don't always rattle.
The worst one though was when my youngest stepdaughter and I came out of the shop front door and confronted a huge tan bull. She screamed and that big 'ol bull did a midair 180 and ran about 50' away before looking back to see what that awful noise was. Being new in the neighborhood, I called the only neighbor that I had a number for. She called the rancher who owns the ranch at the base of our cliff and soon a truck pulled up with a horse trailer. The cowboy unloaded his horse and herded the bull back down the way he came and fixed the barb wire fence. Every now and then, we still have a cow or two in our lower field. That never happened when I lived in L.A.
I have lots of motion sensor lights outside but I still feel a little nervous walking from the shop to the house at night.

 

"Hic.....honesss dad... we onlee dru drunk two be..beerz while wee hic wuz wai..waitin fur that... that big ratt to...to...exi...exi...leeve tha ...hic.... gurash..... honess....onleee two.....maybeee threee...."

 

Did he have an accent and was he trying to sell you insurance?

 

Sorry to hear you lost her.... We just had to put down my 10 year old big black cat (who acted more like a dog than a cat), and I keep expecting to see him in his usual places, so I know the feeling of missing them.

 

Bulls are quite good at scaring the shit out of people ain’t they? I don’t mind the cows except for when they cross the line (and fence) and eat all the plants in my garden.

 

Both my dad and my grandfather have ate possum. They both said they were kind of greasy tasting and nasty. I have never had the pleasure.

 

I’ve had meals in foreign countries that had they told what we were eating before hand, I’d have passed

 

People eat goofy shit like that because they don’t have a McDonald’s!

 

No more like Spotted Owl.

 

It's been quite a week, I confronted a big ass possum, he ran away.
I used to send them to the promised land (possum urine in hay is very bad for horses) but since
the wife woke up with a bloody neck from an imbeded tick ( not the black legged kind )
I leave them alone cause they eat lots of ticks.
She was given antibiotics and the tick was sent away, results came back negative for lyme
disease.
I went up on the tracks to watch our new neighbours, the fox family and a doe crossed and went down
into neighbour Mandy's bush, she was excited.
One year we were overrun with red squirrels and chipmunks, I live trapped 80 little buggers and
released them the other side of the river a couple miles away.
Racoons do too much damage to be nice to them, that's all I'm going to say about that.
We have lots of rabbits that I feed in the winter and a peacock that shows up every once in a while.
No shortage of visitors.

 

I was doing some mowing with a big Bobcat last week, and had to clean up some star thistle that was over 5' tall. The Boys were hanging out under the olive trees, munching away- never knew cows would eat star thistle?



Shut it off for a minute, and the Big Boss let it be known that he was not intimidated by my little toy. I went up there last year with my little 8N tractor, and he has that one seriously outweighed

 

Just goes to show how long your projects take.

 

I had a Skink get in my shop. A Skink is a lizard that looks more like a snake with legs. This one was shiny black with blue stripes and maybe a foot long. Not harmful and usually runs away. However this one would show up at the most in opportune times. Like laying under a car and reaching for a wrench or sitting on the floor and suddenly coming out from under whatever I was working on. It would scare the crap out of me every time. I finally caught him and released him in a wooded area. I really don’t like killing things I just don’t want them sharing my space.

 

Even with all the helpers I’ve had around here, I could never go back to living in a city. The fact of the matter is I enjoy the animals. And I’ll just sit and talk to them when they come around. People think I’m nuts, but I just tell them the truth, no wild animal ever hurt me like people have. My one dog Ellie May thought squirrels should not have to live outside. So she’d catch them and bring them in with her after going poop. Got so bad I would not let her back in without checking her mouth first. Did you know a walker coon hound could climb a tree? I didn’t but learned that fun fact! Do you know how hard it is to get a squirrel out of the house? Let me just say when you have cathedral ceilings and stucco walls it sucks! 4 times!

 

Speaking of armadillo reminds me of an uncle I had in East Texas. He called them possum on the half shell.

 

At my girlfriends house she had installed a doggy door in the man door of the garage so her cat could eat in peace. So much for that idea one night when a masked diner showed up at the buffet.

 

Armored possum

 

Or like professional foodies refer to it as possum on the half shell! HRP

 

Raccoons are smarter than any human. They will outsmart us every time. The worst part about it they will lord their skills over us all the while making us laugh hysterically! They have years of evolution outsmarting us stupid humans. In fact that is true of all animals. You all probably think dogs and cats are our pets.
WRONG! We are their pets! Who provides the food, shelter, warmth, cooling, color tv and a comfortable couch and bed to sleep in? I’ll give you a hint, It Ain’t Them! Now what do all the stupid humans out there have to say?
Let’s face it they have the bigger brains. Wild animals are even smarter. They don’t have to go to work all day. Yet they know where to get free food and shelter. From us. The city of Chicago downtown in the Loop it is not unusual to see a coyote walking down the street at high noon with thousands of people all around them. They will cross the street at stoplights when it says to walk. One even waited outside a small deli for someone to open the door for them on a 100 degree day so it could walk inside like it owned the place and lay down in the nice and cool display cooler.
Yet you never hear about them eating some little kid or biting some one. It is even rare for a pet to come up missing! The fact is they would rather play with them or mate with them! That’s how I got my coyote pit bull mix! And she was easily as smart as a 7 year old kid. And in some ways even smarter.

 

Hank would like to see a photo, so would I.

Bob