Day 13 - Outsmarted by a Squirrel

I am focused today on catching a varmint in my yard.  It's Saturday and I have nothing planned other than to get one of these traps working.  As I was driving home today I was a few construction workers in the middle of my street talking and pointing at my squirrel trap.  I pulled into my driveway and one of the guys came up to me and said that they have been watching this one squirrel go into the trap, grab some food and come out of the trap only to eat the food while sitting on top of the trap!  He said they were laughing the whole time and almost took out their cell phones to video tape the event.  Great.

Apparently my trigger mechanism needs a little tweaking still.  In the other trap, I noticed that it had triggered but was empty when I checked it.  It looked like a squirrel was actually trapped and then dug out a hold in the ground to escape under the side wall of the trap.  Hmmm.  Back to the drawing board again.  I wish that I could see what is actually happening so I can come up with a working solution.  I tried to video tape the trap once and after about an hour of filming, I went outside and the trap with the camera on it was untouched.  The other trap - only 10 feet away - had sprung and there was nothing inside.  Very frustrating.  As long as I keep moving forward though - it's just a matter of time before I get something!

I took the kids for an adventure hike through Hawthorne Woods - probably spelled incorrectly.  This was new to all of us and although we had a "map" of the general area, we got totally lost and ended up miles from our parked truck.  We were all exhausted and thirsty and hungry.  We ended up calling the cavalry - called Debbie on her cell phone to come pick us up.  We were searching for wild greens, varmints, and possibly some mushrooms.  We found nothing - except some wild violet greens and 3 small salamanders.  I didn't eat the salamanders.  They looked too slimy and I wasn't that desperate.

We were rescued by Debbie with snacks for the kids and water for all.  Sometimes getting lost is a fun thing.  This time it all worked out well but it's a lesson to learn to be more careful next time.

The delicious smoked striped bass has been sustaining me but it's not going to last very long at this rate.  I have to ration it better and keep Ty out of my bag of fish. 

Busy day tomorrow.  I got a call that the bees have arrived and I am going to try to get them tomorrow.