Catch and release: the woodchuck had miles to go before it slept, last night (and didn't return... ?)

We've been having our tomatoes chewed up, as well as pepper plant leaves and the sweet potato's leaves. Finally the game trail camera captured the woodchuck, as documented here.

Last night I made a quick post to show the cute little terror.

So, here's the full story. Went out to look at the garden yesterday, and noticed the several "Homer" buckets I had set out to catch rainfall. So, I consolidated those, ending up with six buckets of water (about 30 gallons). Last year, doing container gardening, I was able to do almost the entire summer's worth of watering with harvested rain. This year, there's a lot more to the garden so I've been watering from city water which is not as good (plants don't need fluoride, or chlorine, or etc).

I brought those buckets out to the garden, dropping them outside the fence to the right of the gate, and it wasn't until the second or third trip that I noticed the woodchuck in the left have-a-heart trap!

I debated what to do with him. Don't like killing things I don't eat (someone gave a recipe yesterday! :) ), so decided to let him go, far away from here. Drove a couple miles, across a salt-water river, and then took a walk through the woods on a path that's maintained by a local group. I had walked that path before, and knew of a bridge over some water which I intended to release him at.

Passed a guy and his two sons, and described what happened. One said "oh he's so cute!" and I cautioned him not to touch it, as it might bite. Chatted a bit and then I was past them.

Got to the bridge, perhaps 200' long over some stagnant water. Went halfway across the bridge, took off the gloves, started the camera, and opened the trap. He just sat hunched in the back! I tried turning the trap so the mouth was at the bottom; he gripped the sides with his claws. Turned the trap over, as he was sitting on the mechanism; this way it wouldn't close. But he still wouldn't budge!

Heard the three approaching behind me, and turned and asked them to bring a thin stick to poke him with (you can hear me yell to them on the video). They got one, and I poked from the rear of the trap and he moved, but only a few inches; and then the stick got too thick. The "bottom" of the trap (on top at that point) had larger holes, so I was able to put the stick down there and push him out.

He sat just outside the entrance to the trap, and looked back at me; looked forward; looked back; and then slid off the bridge into the water (only about a foot drop). I followed him with the camera swimming for a bit; he got on a log, then back in the water and I lost track of him. It took five and a half minutes to release!

As they were walking on the bridge, I heard the man caution one of his sons not to fall in the water, or it'd be a stinky ride back home. After the woodchuck took a swim, the kid asked "why does he want to be stinky?" I said "Haha right? Well better stinky than eaten, right?" (You can hear me say that, but the kid was too far away.)

It took 10 or 15 minutes to walk from the parking area to the bridge, and the same time coming back. I really like that -- it's some sort of ritual, and I look forward to doing it again if we catch something else. The sweet potato's two vines had all the leaves gone this morning, so "something else" seems to be present!

I had to put the top down in order to get the cage in a bucket in the front seat (the bucket in case it peed). Also put a garbage bag on the seat, and another over the head rest and the back of the seat. But then decided that wasn't enough protection in case it wanted to claw (it had dug up the soil under the cage, some). So I got my bath towel (time to wash it anyway :) ), and draped that over the seat; the cage held it to the seat so it wouldn't fly away.

Driving there had no issues. However, coming home, perhaps because the cage didn't have the weight of the creature at the bottom of it, as I was taking a turn to the right the cage leaped towards me and smashed me in the right temple. I saw it coming and put my right hand up to block it, which slowed it down; probably would have been another concussion if I hadn't. Held my palm to my temple most of the way home, it hurt quite a bit.

Once I had gotten the cage back out to the garden and put some more cheese in it, I noticed my right palm had three spots of blood, and wondered "how did I do that?" I wet my left thumb and rubbed, and it came off -- and then remembered, my forehead's probably bleeding! Went inside and fixed it up, it had dried but I still put some antibiotic ointment on it.

Oddly, the game trail camera didn't catch anything! The last image from the previous day was around 5:30 pm, of me checking on things (I'm camera shy, I'm not really on fire :) ). You can see the two traps, perpendicular to each other; the one on the left you can see the mouth of the trap is open, and the door above it.

The next image was from the next day around 3 pm, and shows the left trap closed! It doesn't really show the woodchuck; you can see a gray lump behind some weeds. You might notice that the images are 0035 and 0037 -- that's because the 0035 was the third of a three-burst-shot, and then it took a minute-long video (which was 0036) -- nothing captured in between! It's possible that he was caught at night but the other day I went out to water at 8 am, and then checked again at 12:30 pm or so and one red tomato that I had been admiring on the vine, was on the ground and half-eaten -- so it seems he's active in daylight, perhaps "also"...

Here's the video of the release and a little more, with music by my favorite artist. :)

The music in the video is all by Jonathan Coulton, and freely usable. The three songs are:

https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/Chiron_Beta_Prime
https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/Someone_Is_Crazy
https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/Furry_Old_Lobster

In the first, a family has been banished to an asteroid and are writing Christmas letters home; I banished this creature to a place miles from here, across two rivers. Hopefully he doesn't have anyone to write home to! (He seems young; likely, his folks left this space to him?)

In the second the chorus is "someone is crazy and it's you" -- the crazy woodchuck, abusing property rights! It also includes the line, "You set the trap, you lie in wait 'til someone trips the wire." :)

And the third is about a species of mammal called "lobster" which is similar to an otter; the woodchuck looked similar to one when it was swimming. And, reading the description at that link, I see that it was a fictional creation by John Hodgman for his book "Areas of My Expertise" (he was on The Daily Show, and before that was one of the PC/Mac from that series of commercials). That's actually really amusing -- all this time (since around 2005 when I first heard it), I've thought that there really was a mammalian species named the same as the crustacean! :)

I didn't plan it, but the last song starts just after he jumps in and you can hear me say, "Ah, he's swimmin'!" Great synchronization! :)

So as not to cut the third song short -- and also, so as to include more images and video -- I added other pictures I took of him, and two short videos, ending up just at the end of the song, as the clips are ending. Making this now my longest produced video! :)

There's a black part for five seconds or so around 4:00; I had to put my phone down, to break the twigs off the stick so it would fit through the smaller holes. Neat how when I pick it up, the camera sees bright white, then fades it down. Before that I had set the phone on top of the cage, so at least then it saw the woodchuck. Still working on my video production skills! :)

Just as he's exiting the cage, Joco sings "The world's against you so you think or maybe you wish it was", with my stick poking him from behind, and potentially coming out to become a meal -- the world was definitely against this poor thing!

Hope you enjoy, this was my most time-consuming creation so far! :)