The Frugal Farm Living life deliberately

A couple of weeks ago I headed out to the blackberry patch to pick berries. There was a stand of long grass in my path so I stood on it to bend it down and clear the way. Every time I stepped on the grass, I heard a funny noise in the currently unused irrigation pipe close by. The funny thing was, I wasn't hitting the pipe every time I pushed down on the grass, but the noise coincided with the grass hitting the ground. The noise sounded like a frog jumping up and down, echoing a little in the 30 foot piece of plastic pipe. I kicked the pipe a little, trying to see if I could hear anything else. Nothing. I had the phone with me, so I called Frugaldad and told him about it, and he mentioned that he thought he'd heard a noise out there the day or so before. A thought crossed my mind....could it actually be a skunk in the pipe? We have had a skunk eating the cat food so many times this summer, I have had to put big rocks on the cat food box to keep the skunks and coons out. Luckily the dog hasn't been skunked since February.

I got really brave and got down on the ground and looked, and imagine my surprise to see that at the other end of the pipe there was indeed a skunk!

I finished my berry picking but was really cautious when I walked back to the house.

Later that afternoon I went back out and the skunk was gone.

In the meantime, we had to come up with a plan. We didn't know if the skunk was living in the pipe or merely visiting. Our best plan was to try and kill it by smoking it with a gopher bomb. Our next best plan was our friend Marlin. Marlin is a .22 and Frugalboy is an excellent marksman.

stay tuned for the rest of the story....