BayouBoogie: Anything but

This week's entry will be a little shorter than usual. I was a little under the weather for the whole week and didn't take too many pictures...maybe the game cam was in the same boat, because when I pulled the card Thursday night, there were only a couple of night shots, and it looked like coons-no surprise there. I set the hav-a-hart anyway and baited it with little friskies salmon dinner (sure to be irresistable to coons). We looked out the window Friday morning, and... Hallelujah! There was a non-skunk critter in the trap. We could hardly wait to drip the morning coffee, slip on the rubber boots, and head out to take care of the varmit. As we got close, we saw just what kind of critter was lured in by the bait...

A big old barn cat! Upon his release, he streaked away to the north through the piney woods. I'm pretty sure he belongs to the 40 acres on the northern boundary. Anyway, I replaced the batteries in Big Daddy's game cam and set up one of the other Cuddeback cameras in hopes it would take pictures. I'll know next week.

The rest of the day was spent mowing, then attempting to fix the mower. One of the gambrels came apart (like a wheel bearing only mounted vertically on one of the mower blades). I had an extra one, and the repair is not too technical, but I couldn't get the blade off to remove the part. After several hours of laying in the dirt and hammering on the handle of a wrench (and occasionally my forearm) I quit in disgust and will try another day. Denise and I went into town and splurged at a Sonic, and got a good night's rest.

The next morning dawned quite muggy with a little fog, but I could see activity in the hav-a-hart. We looked through binoculars...it was not a skunk and it was definitely not a cat. Finally, it looks like we got one of the intended varmits. We dripped the morning coffee, slipped on our rubber boots, and took along the .22 and found...

A marsupial! While we are not catching our intended prey, it looks like boxing the bait end of the trap with concrete pavers is working. Anything that wants salmon cat food (and it seems that is anything EXCEPT a raccoon) has to come in through the front door. Anyway, the 'possum is now buzzard chow and we'll try again next week.

I've taken all of the pictures in this post with my smart phone (except for two reference pictures around the pump shed). I must not be smart enough to figure out how to take good pictures, because I wanted a good one with the bird feeder and bird bath (courtesy of my Aunt Faye). This will have to do for now. I've seen wrens and cardinals splashing around, and I'm sure it will be quite popular with our avian visitors next summer. The birds have definitely found the food, and are going to town on the seed buffet. Mostly cardinals, chickadees and titmice (titmouses?). BTW, the azaleas look so much better after the rain we've had compared to during this summer's drought.

Since LSU mercifully did not have a game on Saturday, Denise and I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the privet and other brush from around the old pumphouse. Actually she did most of the work with loppers and a bowsaw...I did a couple of the larger trunks with the chainsaw. I was in charge of the burnpile. First, the only pictures I could find of the pumphouse as we found it - It's to the left in the first picture.