Garden Pests and Diseases: Deterring Digging Cats in the Garden, 1 by Equilibrium

Equilibrium wrote:
Other than an arrogant heron that was eating me out of house and home by scarfing down all the fish in my ponds, the only psycho birds I have had were those geese and that was my fault for violating the cardinal sin of not feeding wildlife. You'd think I would have learned my lesson hearing all the horror stories of what happens when campers feed wildlife in camp grounds and then the critters come looking for handouts from other campers. The old stimulus response deal. I suppose it takes a long time to break a habit and like people, animals are always going to look for the quick and easy food source. Can't blame em. My husband went camping with the boys last summer to a remote area in Minnesota somewhere and when they entered the camp grounds they were instructed to not leave any food in their tents because there were some bears and raccoons that they were trying to "untrain". The kids scoffed at the suggestion and one of them even told me later that he hid his chips because he figured one little bag in foil wouldn't make a difference. My husband said that after the boys saw the "visitor", their bags of stashed chips and cookies and granola bars magically appeared on the picnic table and they asked him to please lock them up in the truck. There's a photo below of the "visitor". My kids aren't exactly rocket scientists but they made the connection that was a baby and that there was a momma not too far away. I was not amused and felt my husband should have gone through their tents with a fine tooth comb but what do I know.

Snapping turtles I have never rescued but I have run across a few in the road. I let them grab on to the end of my shovel and just drag them across the road in the direction they were heading. Now my neighbors are a different story. I saw the guy next door with a wheel barrel walking in the direction of one of my ponds. He had "rescued" a huge snapping turtle from the road and was whisking it to safety. He dumping it in my pond... literally dumped it by tilting the wheel barrel and letting it slide on out. I watched him from the second floor of my home. Great guy... I'll have to remember to scratch him off the Christmas card list. In all seriousness, I like my neighbor and his heart was in the right place but I wish he would have unloaded that thing in somebody else's pond. I can't believe he didn't lose any body parts getting that turtle in the wheel barrel because it was bigger than the bottom of one of those old fashioned vaporizers. He's a lucky man. Before that we had a neighbor kid dump a little snapper that was about the size of a small tea cup saucer in our little ornamental pond out front. It took me darn near a week to get that thing out and I finally did it by dragging a panty hose leg filled with chicken or maybe it was tuna around the bottom of the pond. He latched on and I yanked him out. The turtle Herman stuck in the natural pond here was way too big to mess around with. Needless to say, we haven't used that pond for anything in over a year. And here is a link to a photo of baby snappers that emerged this past summer by me. You have to admit they are cute. Pardon my dirty fingers, I was playing in the dirt as usual.
http://davesgarden.com/place/t/541667/