A Christmas Eve Convention

[Harold Pickens]

I keep a large platform bird feeder with hanging tube feeders, wire baskets, and suet feeder just across the flagstone courtyard from the kitchen window. Unfortunately, its dark when I am eating breakfast, and I dont get home until after 5, so I dont get to enjoy it much. I have an army of red squirrels
(pine) that come to the feeder and an occasional fox squirrel. Thats ok, they are fun to watch. The racoons come in at night and just destroy everything, chew up the plastic, and even the metal baskets. So, I keep a box trap set under the feeder, and, well, those sub sonic .22's work well in my H&R revolver for this. Christmas morning, I had a huge possum in the trap. I do not harbor the same malovolance for possums as I do the racoons. They are such ugly, prehistoric creatures, that I kind of like them. So, I opened the cage door and 20 minutes later, he was still trying to get out the back side. i dropped a piece of ham a foot in front of the trap and he finally poked his head out of the box trap and left. He went over to our patio door and looked thru it, and then went up over the hill.