Nuisance Animals!

I so enjoyed part of my Master Gardener training yesterday, isn't that how it always goes? You usually don't have a day where the whole thing is just to die for. Yesterday was no exception, however I have come to expect great things from titles like "Nuisance Animals"! It was the best teaching so far and the county game warden was on his game. He showed us how to use a "live trap", which by the way can and will caught a huge array of animals. I was surprised to see and hear about using foot traps and snares, which I thought were only used by mean crazy people. I was wrong. We had one tree hugger in the group, you know the one that thinks we should all own eight dogs, like her, and compost everything, don't shoot anything that's alive and sing Kumbuya by a camp fire at night. I really thought she was going to split open when the Captain showed us how to "get" a beaver. Oh My! But it's like he was telling us, no one wants a beaver and they are the one animal that ends up costing the American people millions of dollars to fix what they mess up. The most important thing I learned was that squirrel season is open from March to December and I can't fire a gun in the city limits. Which by the way is the reason I think we have too many squirrels, they know and move to town! I also learned that armadillos are stupid and if you put a live trap out with 2x4's leading into the trap, they will hit the wood and walk right into the trap. When the door slams shut they will probably have a heart attach and die, because everything stresses them out. In fact the best quote of the day didn't come from Martin Luther King it came from the Captain, "I thought armadillos were born dead on the side of the road!" I'm just glad that armadillos don't climb trees like the squirrels do. I can just see them falling and freaking people out!