Wild animals in our backyard!

One morning early March, I found an area of rather extensive damage to our backyard lawn. It was the first time that happened and we didn't know how it got there. Consequently we didn't do anything. And, a couple of days later, again in the morning, I noticed several areas of extensive damage! I was panicked, did some research, and hypothesized that it was done by either a raccoon or some kind of wild animal. Talked with my hubby and thought about sprinkling soap water, etc, but none of the treatments seemed to work permanently. Then my hubby found a service specialized in setting up traps to capture wild animals. They came around 9am on March 13, set up a trap (cage with a can of sardines), and left.

Two hours later, I heard a noise from the direction of the trap. Something about the thought of potentially catching an animal in the trap gave me an uneasy feeling. I was afraid. Or I was scared that an animal might be scared. I approached the cage and found a big furry grey animal. I was getting even more uneasy. I peeked into the cage... AND guess what was in it!!! A CAT! A huge grey cat! He looked at me with a set of scared eyes and meowed. I felt so bad and immediately called down my hubby who was doing some work upstairs. He opened the trap, and immediately the cat ran away. Boy, it was a HUGE cat, though. I thought it was a raccoon from the size. Anyway, that was the first animal that got caught.

Nothing else was caught that evening. The cat obviously never came back despite another fresh can of sardine:-)

Next morning, my hubby woke me up in the morning with an excited voice. I knew something was caught. I went downstairs with him and peeked into the trap. It was an opposum (or possum). We've seen him once before in our backyard, but not sure if it was the same one. He was small and shivering from fear. His eyes were full of sorrow and I felt really bad. And, he was way too small to do such big damage to our lawn. Anyway, we called the service provider immediately, as we wanted to release him as quickly as possible. They came by noon and he was taken away to an appropriate site to be released.

The service man thought he was NOT IT! He recommended that we leave the trap for a while. He set up another one with peanut butter like substance this time. Nothing was caught that evening or the day after. Then two mornings later, this time I woke up earlier, and heard a rather loud clinging sound from the trap. I was afraid that another small animal might have been caught, but when I got closer to the trap I knew from the size of the capture that this might be IT. It was big. It was grey. It had a striped tail. And I also saw a hand with five long slim fingers vigorously trying to open the cage. I was like... oh my... He looked at me with his eyes - looking rather vicious to me. I immediately woke my hubby up, and we called the service provider again to have him taken away and released to somewhere immediately. We were 100% confident that he was IT. We haven't had any damage to our lawn ever since. I am hoping that both opposum and raccoon are back in the woods being happy.