The 'Book Cave' book of the week.

A trap is set...and an unexpected visitor.

So...on Monday I went in search of a fox trap and I think I got the only one left in town. In the past we have borrowed someone else's and have never successfully caught a fox in one. We did catch a fox years ago mid attack, cornering it in the pen and then putting it into the borrowed trap to relocate but despite putting traps out a few times have never successfully tempted anything in, except, on one occasion, a dozy possum.This fox is very wily so I have tried to mask my human scent by rubbing the trap all over with a pork steak. (Bear Grylls can ask for my advice whenever he wants.) For the past two nights I have been leaving cheese out and it has been disappearing but that might have been bush rats or possums...but I do think it could be our greedy fox.The trap has been set for two nights now and baited with cheese. I have put it up by Fort Yudhisthira as, no doubt, this fox will be back to try his luck with the only 'chooks' left alive on Thorndale Ridge. I put some cheese in the trap and some outside around it. The cheese around it disappeared the first night so I did not replace it and the only bait left is now in the trap. There is one piece that can be reached without setting the trap off and one piece further in that will hopefully trigger the trap to close when 'the beast' tries to get it. (Slowly, slowly catchy beastie!).Last night I put out an infrared wildlife camera I got a few years ago to try and capture this nocturnal cheese thief and this morning, at dawn, it recorded this...[wpvideo Pb8FMBvw][wpvideo 0nT3Vkab]A feral cat!Sadly this has to go too...when we catch it. It’s estimated that feral cats kill 75 million native animals every night across Australia, including birds, frogs, small mammals, and reptiles. It was definitely a fox that killed the hens but this is another unwanted predator on our hillside.It ate most of the cheese just inside the trap so Perhaps will be back tonight for the rest.

Possum Galore.

A few steps closer to completion.

Fat fox!

So...the fox has struck again. It finished off all our neighbours hens the other night. It seems the boys had opened the pen during the day and not closed it at night and so the fox didn't have to dig for it's dinner over there. In our attack the fox killed them all, took one and left four. Next door they were all gone with just a mass of feathers left behind from the battle. We have since discovered three different places where the fox has dug under the fence around our old pen. It makes us think that since our attack it has been back a few times to collect what it left behind. I am kicking myself that I hadn't checked the perimeter of the pen for these weaknesses after we put Quetzalcoatl and the others in there. I am leaving out old cheeses from Will's work to tempt it back every night until we hatch a plan to catch it.