A Ringtail Visits

This is a ringtail, the lankier cousin of the more commonly known raccoon. It looks like something straight out of Madagascar. contrary to popular belief, it can and will eat small cats and chickens….of which i have both right now. I spotted it in a cedar while doing the evening chores.

I did not grow up around firearms. As a result i never learned to have or handle a firearm. I am very good with a machete, of which i have multiple. However, a machete is a weapon that is only going to help you if your opponent wants to fight. If your opponent wants to sit 30 feet up in a tree for two hours, you are going to be standing in the dark doing a lot of nothing while you wait for your head lamp batteries to run down.

I did not want the ringtail to fight Cricket once i’d gone to bed. She was the reason i found it in the first place. She stopped purring, turned her head in the direction of the big cedar near the shed, and trained her eyes and ears in that direction. She sat very still and quiet. Because of all these behaviors, i knew an animal was over there and i went looking until i found the ringtail in the top of the tree. It had no intention of coming down so i could fight it. It climbed to the very top of the tree and stared down at me as i stared up at it for two whole hours. When the headlamp ran out of batteries and i had to go in and get more i realized this strategy was not working. I couldnt stand there and stare at it all night. I ended up making a decision that Cricket would have to sleep in the house. Rosie, the biggest chicken, had taken to sleeping outside the coop in the pen with the pullets, seemingly to guard them from visiting the water dispenser and getting a bite to eat while the older chickens slept. She seemed to have murderous motivations on her mind, but in a fight against a ringtail Rosie would probably be of use to the pullets. She would pick their survival over the intruder’s.

I closed Cricket temporarily in the pet taxi on the porch. I ran to the shed and dug around until i found the extra dog crate. She would need a litter box. I grabbed the rectangular glass baking dish i used to collect rain water. It was dry at the moment. I knew i had litter from years ago in the shed somewhere. I couldnt find it. I threw wood shavings in the glass baking dish and put it in the extra dog crate which already had a layer of hay in it from the last time i had used it to transport the pullets (emma and francis) to bandera. i threw in the bowl of rain water/well water that she had originally been drinking from even though i provided her a cleaner new plastic dish to drink from. She preferred the big glass dish she found in my fire pit and now that she’d drank from it i couldnt use it for rain water so i gave it to her. I grabbed some of her blankets and threw them in the back of the crate. I dragged the crate through the one room house to the bathroom and wedged it in there sideways and diagonal, sticking out of the doorway.

I put cricket in the crate in my bathroom. I promised to let her back outside in the morning. I just couldnt sleep knowing she was out there with a full grown ringtail that knew she was on the porch. Cricket howled to be let out constantly all night. Cashew barked because she could hear Cricket in the bathroom and i wasnt letting her get at her, all night. Sili whimpered because she could hear Cricket’s distress calls and Cashew’s territorial barking all night. I laid in the bed trying to luck into five minutes of sleep by accident at any moment. It did not happen. It was mass chaos all night but in a way it was more sleep than i usually got because i knew all three animals were under my roof and nobody was outside getting eaten.

I am not good at having an outdoor kitten.

The following day i informed the men at work who keep telling me they are going to teach me to shoot that if any of them are serious i would like to begin that now. For context i should explain, there are a few men that i work with who like to stand around and ask questions about would i shoot this animal or that animal if the scenario were right or the circumstances called for it. What if it were rabid? What if my animals were in danger? What if it got hit by a car and was suffering? Though i have taken them up on their offer to teach me to shoot 3 or 4 times now nothing ever materializes from the conversations. This time i informed them that i was serious. I needed to learn how to shoot raccoons and raccoon-like animals so that i wasnt just standing there under a tree with a headlamp for two hours…so the chickens and cat could be safe. I was interested in whatever kind of gun would kill raccoon sized animals, not have a ton of kick back, and be relatively easy to aim for a newbie. They discussed a couple of options…a kind of handgun and a kind of rifle that would be appropriate for smaller animals. One said he’d look around and see if he had something i could practice with. I programmed his address into the contacts on my phone so i could go practice on his property. He made a joke about practicing in the parking lot and i said absolutely not that’s an excellent way to get fired…there’s a sign on the door saying so.

Nothing further came of it. I think its just one of those things people like to talk about but actually bringing it to fruition would be a lot of work. They’d actually have to teach me, from square one. They’d have to give up free time they could be spending on their own homesteads tending to their own responsibilities, or spending with family. And, depending on how i am with a weapon and how quick or slow a study i am, i could be a liability to their safety throughout the process. I dont see this going anywhere but if one of them ever picks a day and a gun to teach me on, it is something i would like to learn. Its real **** hard to best an animal with a machete when the animal is 30 feet up in a tree clinging to a branch that would snap before i even attempted to put my body weight on it.