That\u2019s a good guess. \u00a0But, I\u2019m not talking about my in-laws. \u00a0My in-laws are in fact pretty cool. \u00a0It\u2019s all the critters that think our barn was built for them. \u00a0Our experience with barn intruders all began when our grain bins were dumped over several days in a row. \u00a0So, we assembled our first trap to catch the culprit. \u00a0Hilariously, the first thing we caught was a hen. \u00a0Oops. \u00a0It was soon freed once the children declared her innocent. \u00a0Next, we captured\u00a0our barn cat! \u00a0Oops again. \u00a0Well, it turns out we were housing a family of raccoons and all their cousins. \u00a0Over the next couple of weeks, we became quite the \u2018coon trappers and could have clothed our entire family with coonskin caps like frontiersman Davy Crockett and explorer Meriwether Lewis. \u00a0Our then 3 year old\u00a0pitied one of the trapped overweight raccoons, so she colored a raccoon family picture and placed it on the cage\u00a0as a gift. \u00a0Apparently, raccoons do not like\u00a0coloring pages, or perhaps it’s that they don’t like their\u00a0kind being colored all the colors of the rainbow. \u00a0The paper was completely shredded within 15 minutes. \u00a0Eventually, our bins did finally stay upright overnight and the traps were empty every morning. \u00a0Word must have spread quickly among the Hill Country brush that we had become ruthless trappers. \u00a0Or maybe it\u2019s because we moved all our grain bins to the tack room and locked the door every night. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t really matter why – we outsmarted those raccoons. \u00a0One problem solved. \u00a0Soon after, we were reminded of the predation-prey theory which we learned years ago in ecology class. \u00a0You see, our\u00a0barn cats could not get in to the locked tack room but the mice could still find a way in through the cracks, and we were soon overrun with mice. \u00a0Sticky glue traps were the answer for those unwelcome guests. \u00a0Our success in eliminating the mice\u00a0had one unfortunate consequence. \u00a0We actually almost lost one of the chicks being raised\u00a0in the tack room. \u00a0It had escaped the\u00a0brooder-ring and decided to test out how sticky the mousetrap really was. \u00a0I was able to free the thing\u00a0even though most of its feathers remained behind\u00a0(thankfully, feathers grow back and it’s now a fully feathered healthy hen). \u00a0Exhaustingly, our battle against unwelcome guests continues to this day. \u00a0Our barn is present-day\u00a0home to the smelliest of all guests. \u00a0A skunk! \u00a0Oddly, it likes to spray our tractor wheel for some unknown reason. \u00a0We recently read advice that playing music in your barn will keep critters out. \u00a0So, we’ve been blaring continuous Christmas music for the past week in our barn. \u00a0Hopefully, the skunk shares views on Christmas that are similar to Mr. Grinch’s opinions (prior to his heart change!). \u00a0So, if you’re ever visiting the franch, and you start hearing Christmas music 24-7, it may be a sign you\u2019ve overstayed your welcome.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s a good guess. \u00a0But, I\u2019m not talking about my in-laws. \u00a0My in-laws are in fact pretty cool. \u00a0It\u2019s all the critters that think our barn was built for them. \u00a0Our experience with barn intruders all began when our grain bins were dumped over several days in a row. \u00a0So, we assembled our first trap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":712,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}