Lewisville Wildlife Sanctuary

We are running the Lewisville Wildlife Sanctuary. Well, not exactly, but some of the local wildlife would like to make it such if they had their choice.  In what seemed like a never ending battle with the neighborhood furry rodents (i.e. squirrels), we removed at least two dozen squirrels from our attic over a several year period and transported them to a park in Corinth.  That doesn't count the squirrel that clawed its way through the wallboard behind the bookcase in the loft.  One of our cats, although very surprised but very determined, held him at bay until reinforcements could arrive.(Way to go, Wendy!)  The squirrel made a mad dash for the great outdoors after the Frog opened several doors and removed the cat.  None of the suggested methods (coyote urine, flashing lights, etc.) were successful in scaring the squirrels out of the attic.  The great squirrel wars were finally won several years ago with the help of ABC Pest Control.

We had to shoo an opossum out of the garage when she thought the space behind the workbench would make a nice home for the winter.  That was in addition to the opossum that Lewisville Animal Control removed from our backyard.

One of the greatest animal adventures was the removal of a mother raccoon and her seven two-week old babies in April 2001 (see picture) who had taken up residence in our chimney.  The chimney sweep was able to get the kits out of the chimney and into a box.  We left the box on the ground in the backyard where we could see it from the house.  Mother raccoon recovered the babies (one-by-one by the scruff of the neck) once it got dark. Hopefully they found a happy, but more appropriate, home somewhere in the neighborhood.

I believe it was last fall that I found an abandoned nest of small eggs in a large flower pot in the corner of the garage.  Based on the size of the eggs (see the quarter in the center of the picture) and what I could infer from what was left in one of the unhatched eggs, I am guessing this was home to one of the neighborhood geckos.  (When I looked up gecko removal on the web, it suggested you get a cat.  I am not sure whether our cat, Alex, considers himself old enough to be retired from such duties or he is just not interested, but obviously he wasn't holding up his end in terms of gecko deterrence.)

Now we have something totally different.  Two weeks ago we had begun discovering a few honey bees in the house.  In most cases they were dead (on a windowsill or on the kitchen floor), although I was stung by one that I stepped on in my bare feet in the bedroom.  I was hoping it was some random event, but I continued to find one or two each evening.  Then I cleaned up five dead bees from the window in the kitchen on Thursday night alone. Clearly the situation was not getting any better, and if anything was getting worse.   If this was going to require a major effort, I wanted it resolved before we left on vacation later next month. After a couple of calls on Friday, I found a professional bee removal company that would send someone out on Saturday morning.  Sure enough, there is a beehive in the attic above our bedroom closet.  It is the large light colored blob covered with black dots hanging from the underside of the roof in the middle of the picture to the left.  Apparently it is quite large for this type of thing.  The bee removal dude (BRD) estimates it weighs at least 30 pounds and would have taken the bees many months to build.  The BRD will be back on Monday morning to remove the hive.

To be continued...