Springtime and Babies

Posted on March 30, 2017 by admin — No Comments ↓

Today I’d like to talk to you guys about the springtime, which we’re in right now, and babies and mating and all sorts of things that’s happening at this point in time. What brought me to this subject was yesterday, I removed a couple of black snakes out of a garage that were mating inside the garage. It just kind of makes sense to talk about this now.

At this time of year, the activity is going to be a little strange. Most of the possums we’re picking up, females, have got babies on them. You know that they are a marsupial, and they carry their babies in a pouch or hanging off their back or whatever things they like to do there. It’s kind of cute, hanging off of the back of a mama, when you walk up to the cage. It’s a good time to really try to get rid of your nuisance problems. Actually, you probably should have started on it a month or so ago, because what’s happening now is you’re having that many more to deal with. If you had one nuisance possum, now you maybe have five nuisance possums, full-grown in a couple of months. Right now is still a good time, like on possums.

Armadillos. When they have their babies, they always have four. Always. They’re always the same sex. These animals are constantly breeding and having babies in the springtime here, and it’s a whole lot cheaper getting rid of one armadillo than having to get rid of five armadillos. That’s always a good thing to try to keep up on and remove as soon as you can. Armadillo problems don’t go away. They’re here. You’ve got to capture them and remove them.

Springtime is also a time when you’re going out into your landscape and planting flowers and trimming things up and changing out the mulch and stuff. You need to be aware of your surroundings when you’re doing this, because there are snakes and there’s all different types of wildlife. Possums will just get behind bushes and stuff, and raccoons and rats, and all sorts of things like that. You want to be real careful, and pay attention to where you’re putting your hands. Try to wear some decent gloves that at least will prevent a scratch from an animal. Might not prevent a bite, but at least they will prevent a scratch. Take care. Stick a hoe or rake or something in there and move it around first before you go sticking your hands in things. It’s a smart thing to do. You wouldn’t reach your hand into a blind hole, and you shouldn’t do that when you’re doing landscaping, either.

Another thing I want people to understand about wildlife and landscaping is a few years ago, a lot of the agencies with the counties were preaching low water native landscapes. I get it on the water side of it. Great idea. Native landscaping is cool, but please remember when you have native landscaping, you’re inviting native wildlife, either for food or a place to hang out. When you’re doing lots of ground cover, you’re just making a rat haven, a snake haven, and all sorts of other creepy crawlies that are out there. You have to remember that.

Leaving lights on at night will bring insects in, and then that will bring in things like frogs. The frogs bring in snakes, and it’s kind of a vicious cycle. I’ve been to a house that looked like a murder happened, literally like a murder happened outside, from something killing frogs because they left their front porch light on. It was one of the bloodiest things I’ve ever seen. A lot of clean up, and they just couldn’t figure out what happened.

If you’re going to have native landscaping, expect native animals to be in there, and expect problems. It’s like if you leave your trash can outside, you’ve got to expect something to get into it. That’s a whole another podcast. With springtime coming and the babies are here, you’ve got to do your thing out there, but be safe about it. If you’re having nuisance wildlife problems, now is a great time, a great time, to get that stuff in, and get those animals trapped and removed if they’re giving you problems, so you’re not trapping twice as many, or more. The numbers they can grow to in a little amount of time is phenomenal.

As always, if you have any questions, you can give us a call. 866-263-9453. Again, that’s 866-263-WILD, or you can find us on the web at wildlifetrapper.com. Have a great day.