Ducks VS Skunks. Lessons Learned and A New Beginning Deep Into Idaho for Safety.

Ducks Attacked By Skunk. How did we fix the problem? What The Cats Said and How To Communicate With Your Animals.

Our farm has been under attack by the local wild life. Several different species have decided it's time to take over what we've tried to create. What can we do? 

I have always been an advocate for cats. I am blessed to know just a few of the countless secrets they hold. 

Oddly enough, they are some of the best guard dogs on the planet next to a dog. But only if you know how to read your cat, paying attention to changes in their behavior, they will lead you to any problem areas before you know there is a problem.

In our particular situation,  it was the ducks needing our help. Here's the story from my perspective. 

Cats are quiet so as not to alert an invader they have been discovered. This gives those in tune with the cat an advantage over the intruder, knowing they're there, but the intruder doesn't know we know. This is just one of their very mysterious superpowers.

Dogs however are exactly the opposite. Loud, noisy, barking, and intentionally making their presence known.  Even their size can be estimated by the tone and volume of the bark.  Letting anyone present know they've been detected.

Yes, both the dog and the cat are the exact opposite to one another yet perfectly formed to be exactly what they were born to be. Each useful and willing to work to make our lives better if we utilize their gifts, purposes, and presence in our lives the way they were intended to be.

Yet here I have allowed the busy hum of life around me to dull my senses, distract my thoughts and change my own daily behaviors in ways that cut me off from the communications with my own cats as well as the dogs, whom I often know better than I do myself. 

Now that I am more in tune with what’s happening around our property concerning all the predators congregating and why, I realize, my cats, the dogs and the ducks have been telling me exactly where the invaders are and I have ignored everything they have literally been leading me to for months now. Unintentional most definitely, yet still the sad results end up being the same. 

Our ducks were attacked, one lost her life, two seriously injured and the entire flock was stressed and frantic. 

As I have been researching each different wild creature descending on our farm, sure enough, the areas attractive to each species for building a place of residence, are now being guarded daily by one of my cats. The cats already knew what and where to look for the invaders by following their fine-tuned instincts, I had to use google after the fact. 

The dogs also knew and head been telling me through their actions as well. But I didn't pay close enough attention to them either. I had so many things happening all at once I couldn't think straight

The cats leave the house the second the back door opens in the morning, placing themselves in their chosen areas and they don’t move all day, which is also unusual. They stay there until we literally find them, pick them up and force them in doors at night for their own safety.

Odin our beautiful, sleek, silky, little  black  panther and Pumpkin our orange and white striped little fellow are taking the back corner and back end of property on opposite sides of fence. They seem to have formed their own little team.

Odin guarding the large, thick, full branched tree with some of the huge limbs that were removed and left on the ground a while back next to the neighbor’s barn. These felled limbs have made a PERFECT rest and recreation area for the 3 raccoons that have been seen on the property in the last few weeks.  Although I do firmly believe the raccoons also hang out on other side of the neighbor’s barn, as well as closer to the neighbor's house and in the trees of their front yard.

Perhaps they don’t care to live so close to the skunk who resided under our shed next to the old duck coop? I mean, can you blame them really? Raccoons do not want to be skunks and skunks do not want to be raccoons. I assume their friendships lack a great deal of substance and their ideas of a comfortable place to visit and reside differ as well.

Pumpkin who has recently become more in tune and sparked a friendship with Odin has focused on the duck run and coop area along with the shed right next to the duck area. Approx 20 feet away from Odin.

All day long he is placing himself on one side of the fence or the other right in between those two spots, EXACTLY where the skunk was trapped yesterday morning.
What an amazing little creature with fine-tuned skills he has grown into. Such an asset he has become on our farm.

Maggie continues to panic if we don’t allow her constant access to the inside of the basement…. Odd behavior unless it’s thundering. Different, unusual, not her norm.
Both Morgann and I literally heard the weasel in the basement last fall. Only we didn’t know what it was at the time. But, we know it’s there now, and so does Maggie. . .
She has also taken a sudden love for the garden box sitting approx 10 feet away from the hole in our cement foundation that leads to under the house and into our basement from the outside. Spot on access to see yet not be seen, if and when the creepy little weasel dares to reveal himself in the daylight.

Now that I think back, she has started this behavior over the past couple of weeks. And it was about 2 weeks ago I had noticed a pile of duck feathers scattered in a small area under my Louie tree. It appeared as if a duck had  been killed there in the last 15 mins since I was last outside. This was around noon time. So middle of the day,

I recall being quite alarmed. Quickly looking for the ducks that had suddenly moved from their favorite spot under that tree. I had just been out there and filled their water. It was weird they had left. They were all accounted for but I did notice one was missing most of her tail feathers.
Silly me… I recall thinking
“ My goodness the drake sure is getting violent with his ladies.”

It was so hot, I decided to move their water to other side of yard.
They began to swim and congregate happily over there for the afternoon. Far away from the exit into the yard from under the house and basement area.
“ oh well, I guess they needed a change of scenery.”
Right? WRONG!!! I know exactly what happened that day, now.


Interestingly enough at night when we force all the cats inside, Odin is back to his constant need to open the cupboard door on the floor going in and out of this one specific cabinet that just happens to be directly above the basement area where Maggie is hyper focused on, when inside for the night, or outside during the day.

We know there are and have been mice of course just like everyone’s houses in the basements and crawl spaces, but their behaviors are heightened and more extreme as of late. A noticeable difference, yet I was apparently still disconnected because I wasn't yet putting it all together. Why?

I am finally figuring it out …. FINALLY,
I am becoming more in tune once again with my cats and our communications.
Please don’t think it's because I am an amazing human, because I am not.
If I was, I never would have allowed my senses to be dulled or distracted in the first place.
Nope……. I know for a fact it's because I was finally put into a situation I was forced to take a step back, send up some prayers and plead for some instructions and guidance. Some serious in -sights as to what was happening around me were needed.

Where have I gone wrong? Why was our little Ellie killed in such a horrific manner? Why were the other ducks maimed, severely hurt and torn up?
How do I fix this situation? Will it happen again? OF COURSE it will. What can we do? What do we need to do?

Olive our lively, opinionated, temperamental little gray and white cat, has taken control of the front of the house between the thick, very tall bushes and our fairly new placement of the haystack behind the barn.
I see her scamper from one side of the yard to the other, clearly on a mission of some sort.
Now I know why. The pack rat that left a nest inside the hood of my truck and under the wires that was discovered by my mobile mechanic this past week. Thankfully no wires were chewed but the nest was undeniable and very present.
This pack rat has moved into the thick, prickly bushes next to the truck. It’s evading Olive who clearly is on to him. He has moved into his summer home so to speak, as the warmth up inside the truck has not been necessary since the ending of last winter and the cold frigid temps that left with the blooming of spring.
That crafty little bugger.

Olive knows where he is.
She literally sits and stares at that spot for hours. Silently and faithfully protecting us, from it from coming closer to our home. I wonder if he has spent his days staring back at her waiting for a break in her vigilance to make his escape?

The mice that have suddenly been left for me to find, have not chosen to cash in their cookies in that exact same spot on a daily basis as if they have found some sort of elephant graveyard for mice.

No, Olive has been catching them all day long, leaving them by the new tree we planted this past spring, literally giving me a body count of her daily progress. My precious girl all spicey and sassy.

Seriously 3-4 mice PER DAY have been left there, over the past week. I know this because every time I take Mabel outside for some play time, she gets curious of all the deceased little varmints which I quickly retrieve and remove, leaving Mabel to catch all the grasshoppers instead.

Ahhh yes, now Mabel, our most recent little rescue…… She is making all of us crazy with her phsycho kitten antics.

However, she is showing signs of being an extreme hunter already and has gravitated towards the barn yard closer to the haystack as well.
I thought it was to torture Olive, reminding her of her existence. But once again, I realize she knows exactly how to be a cat as does Olive.

When Olive has had enough of Mabel, she’ll clock her a good one, and give her a "fine-tuned reset" to think about her actions for a while. I don't need to worry about Olive; she has her limits clearly and distinctly evident for all who cross her path.  

But, I have been trying to push Mabel and her new developing instincts and talents down, instead of helping her lift them up.
Perhaps she would stop acting like a crazed wild beast if I released my tight  grasp I have  on her, due to my own fear because of her very young age and tiny little gremlin self. Perhaps I need allow her to be the little creature she was born to be. After all my job is to have dominion over the animals, keeping them safe and happy while here on this earth, not take away the rights and identities they were born with and long to explore.

I recall now as I’m writing and pondering, Maggie and Odin were about 10 weeks old when I watched them work together catching a mouse for the very first time…. The two seriously looked like they were pack hunting. It was quite amazing to witness. It wasn’t a baby mouse either, they went after one of the larger mice I had seen at our old house, at their very young ages of less than three months old.

I have always known cats are incredible hunters. Every cat I’ve ever raised has been nothing short of lethal to all small rodents, bugs and snakes.

My cats have been fiercely loyal to me and our home, and I am fiercely loyal to them.
Not a good plan for anything that ever tries to come between us. Such as the large hunting dog that wandered onto our front parking area last summer where I was cleaning the truck.

Out of nowhere Maggie silently stalked behind that unsuspecting  dog, as Odin melted himself to the ground and snaked his way forward at an alarming speed. If he wasn't my own cat, I would have been terrified at what I was witnessing. Not from the dog’s action’s but from the cats!  There they were maybe 1/8 the size of the dog if not smaller.
Those two felines were within inches of an all-out war with this dog that would not have ended well for them, the dog nor me. Every one of us would have needed some serious medical attention.  

Hunting dogs, guard dogs and most dogs in general also know their jobs and do them well. Hunting dogs generally have “cat killer” on their resumes and that’s just a sad fact in nature. Plus most farmers and people do not see the value or purpose in a cat so they turn a blind eye when a cat is in danger or in need of help escaping dogs who can be very lethal themselves.

There is no doubt there would have been at least one of my cats seriously wounded if not worse had that fight escalated before I intervened.
However, I also know that dog would have been seriously hurt or maimed himself, not ever wanting to come back to this area of the woods again.

Taking on one angry cat is one thing, taking on two at the same time, well that is not going to come out ok.

None of the above last paragraph goes along with my general desire and daily actions for the Gentle farming and Gentle Gardening practices here at Wild Daisy Homestead.

But, here we were smack dab in it, during that moment in time.

I quickly moved myself to a lower spot so the dog was no longer in between me and my cats which I know is what started their vicious desires of feline carnage and mayhem to begin with. I moved so I was now in between the dog and my cats.

The next was to remove the dog from my presence and property before my cats can strike with the covert operation “take the wolf out"  they had going on.

I reached inside the truck and laid on the horn. Then jumped in to start it up revving the engine loud creating a sudden disturbance causing everyone to refocus for a moment and take a breath. If any neighbors were watching, I'm fairly certain, they were questioning my screws being securely tightened at the time. But if honking and revving was what it was going to take, then so be it.

The dog hadn’t really seen me, or if he had, he had not acknowledged me. He was just wandering and sniffing as he moseyed around the neighborhood on some unbeknownst dog excursion. But he quickly redirected himself with a jump backwards and was now heading across the street and away from us.  Not one step too soon.

I’m still not sure if that dog ever knew he was a half a step away from a full blown ambush. But one thing I am 1,000% sure of, if he had challenged
them or dared to say “ go ahead come at me bros” in any of his doggie styled body language, they would have  stepped to him and thrown some wicked paws and teeth without any hesitation.

I know for a fact if cats are regularly de wormed, fed good food, FIXED ASAP, litter boxes kept clean and a yearly vet visit for check ups and immunizations, they can and will be some serious killing machines all wrapped up in a soft, adorable little packages of fluff ready to curl up and sleep on your lap every night.

When we humans are fed, healthy and cared for we have the energy, stamina and ability to work and do our jobs with precision and strength.

But, when we’re half starved, unwell, filled with parasites or hurt, we go into a survival only mode, causing our work performance, productivity and the ability to work at all being severely compromised.

Shortly after that, the ability to work stops all together if we're not cared for and our needs attended too. Our quality of life goes down the drain as we no longer are thriving, growing, learning and becoming all we can be. We're just to consumed with surviving to worry about living or doing a good job at being a person.

Exactly as it is for a cat, dogs, birds, whales or any other living creature. Even shrubs, trees and plants, need proper care and nourishment.

So can a tree survive without us humans? Sure, it can. It will grow where it wants to grow and do what it wants to do. But if we plant something such as a fruit tree, vegetables, fruit bushes or flowers in a specific place because we want to control and receive a certain outcome and result, we must intervene, provide proper placement, nourishment and water. Constant care in pruning or shaping and thinning of the bushes, shrubs and trees.

If we do not take these steps, we will lose the tree or the fruit thereof. It will die or provide very dull, small or tasteless fruits, if any at all. The nutrition packed, healthy foods we were hoping for are not going to be there. They may fill us, but they won't really benefit us.

If we think about it, deductive reasoning should tell us it's the same with the animals.

We lock them away in cages and filthy stalls, starving, being cruel and watching them be sick as they barely hang on to life just to get them to harvest time.

Tear their babies away from them at birth denying them of everything natural and purposeful they instinctively know, causing complete confusion, stress, panic and frustration as they don't know what to do or how to act all they know is how they feel. Broken and sad inside. Miserable in their existance.

Keeping their bodies filled with anxiety and overwhelming sadness in their souls that shows in their eyes, while assuming on the day of slaughter or at milking time we’re going to get a healthy meat or dairy product for our consumption? How exactly did we as people come to this conclusion?

All these things are justified by humans because “we are given dominion over the animals” We are supposedly at the top of the food chain.

Perhaps being given dominion over the plants and animals means something much more than just simple ability to control them physically and assuming the right to break their spirit and destroy any enjoyment they may have while on this earth because they are just dumb animals. We've relieved ourselves of any guilt or accountability for how we treat them by believing and living this way.

Is there any way that perhaps the meat and animal products coming from these cows, chickens, pigs and sheep production plants, where the pigs are shackled to prevent their movements and the chickens in the egg plants are tortured, their beaks cut off so they can’t peck each other trying to escape their torturous living conditions, and other such filthy livestock living conditions, aren’t actually providing the healthy meats and products we’ve been led to believe they are? Again, deductive reasoning would seem fairly clear as to the answer here. We as a society are completely disconnected with everything that is actually important.

Why all the health issues in society? Perhaps because we have lost touch with and connection to what it means to have dominion over something? I'm thinking thatv is a big 10-4.

All of these thoughts have invaded my heart, mind and soul today because I read a comment on one of my recent posts to social media.  It seems like an endless rabbit hole as I begin to connect just how closely everything in our lives is so closely connected. How closely the animals are connected to us, yet we ignore and mistreat the very creatures here to help us live.

The influence, spiritual connection, enlightenment and divinely inspirational words from the comment on my post, wrapped themselves around me like a heavy quilt in the middle of a cold winters snowstorm as I read them. Isn't it amazing how the direction in one person’s life that another person can change the course of, just by speaking or typing a few simple words?

Perhaps the health and wellbeing of people and society as a whole lies in the very creatures sent here to nourish us, assist us, help and comfort us.
After all, it’s man himself that keeps reminding us “We are what we eat”

Maybe, just maybe consuming depressed, sickly, unhealthy, mistreated animals and their bi - products that we consume internally and wear externally, has more to do with the mental, physical and spiritual health of the entire human population than we ever could have imagined or dared to think about. Definitely something to ponder on next time we sit down to eat a meal.

So to wrap things up with this story, I will get back to the subject at hand. The demise and re homing of our treasured little flock of ducks.

Interestingly enough, as I was outside this morning, both Pumpkin and Odin are wandering around, investigating, keeping me company and exploring like they used to.
It just so happens to be 24 hours since the skunk was trapped and removed, and they have left their posts. Quite the coincidence if you ask me.

How much time, energy, stress sadness and money could have been saved had I been more in tune with the creatures I have been given dominion over right here on our own farm? How much of all of this could have been prevented or greatly reduced if I had been more in tune with the Universe, the animals and even in my spiritual relationships, so I could better hear with my eyes and see with my ears?

Yes, you read that correctly. I do believe if we take a moment to listen with our eyes and see with our ears, a whole new world, dimension and universe full of perspective can open up to us when we need it to.

As I think back, the signs and evidence of there being a problem with the ducks, that were literally being relayed to us, by the ducks themselves, the dogs and the cats. My heart goes out to them. For that, I am sad and broken because some of our animals suffered and lost their life due to my negligence. I hope I have learned and re-connected to the world around me, so this isn't a lesson I need to learn again.

We have put many things into play today here on our little farm.  Over the next week we will change even more things, so we can resolve the issues we’ve had, create a safe healthy environment once again for the animals and people that reside here on our homestead, as well as encouraging the descending wild life to move along and head back towards the mountains that are literally 3 blocks away from in our mountain foothills home and neighborhood.

So, where are the ducks?

Due to our current financial situation, we could not find a way to create the safe spaces we needed to continue to house our ducks. The only thing worse than our connections to our animals being temporarily dulled by life, would be to continue to force our ducks back into the very situation that they have been trying to flee, knowing the outcome would be a horrible death to them all with in just a matter of a few more days.

My daughter, heart broken and devastated at the condition of her  little ducks, did the most loving and gentle farming action she could have ever done. Despite her desire to hold on and love them for herself while trying to put a band aid on the situation, she made a post searching for someone who might be able to take all of her ducks, offer them a good home, keep them safe and all together, if they could survive long enough for us to get them relocated.

The Universe and the Heavens there in- were shining down on her, the ducks and all of us here at Wild Daisy Homestead that day. With-in minutes several people had commented, but one special comment caught the attention of my daughter.

I am so very relieved and happy for our ducks. They arrived at their new home 3 days ago. Their new family lives on a beautiful 40-acre farm/homestead. They have several children, many animals and a love for rescuing those critters who have been abandoned or are needing a safe space to start over.

With tears in our eyes and broken hearts we conceded our ownership of the ducks. My daughter loaded them inside of their crates, each lined with a soft towel making the long trip to their new home more comfortable. Securing them in the truck so they could all see and be near one another, we climbed inside the truck to begin our journey.

They got their last look at our homestead as we rounded the corner and began the long drive across the Utah border, into the great state of Idaho.  After driving a few hours we arrived at the agreed upon place.

I was something that can only be described along the lines of a hot mess, as tears streamed down my face. Here I am 57 years old and crying like a child over a flock of ducks. But they were our ducks.

My daughter was far more controlled at this moment of transition. She was able to carry on an intelligent conversation and relay all the important things about her once beautiful but now half eaten ducks. She kept her composure until we were out of sight.

Tears were shed all the way home. But, it's a funny thing how our longing to have them still here with us and missing them terribly, we both felt and knew in our hearts, not only did we make the right decision, but Morgann had found the exact right people the Universe had prepared to be the new family for her ducks.  What were the odds?

  There will still be those moments that are hard and we will mourn the loss and celebrate the purpose for every creature, but I’d like to think I’ve learned new ways, re-connected with my higher power, reestablished a respect and trust with our own animals we've been given charge over, so that we can be one step closer to understanding the abilities, powers, and downright magical moments that exist all around us and within all of us on planet earth. Listening to the animals and understanding what they're telling us will save their lives as well as our own. 

Watch for my next blog post subject revealing all the things I wish we would have known before getting ducks.

Thank you for following along as we continue to journey down the path of life. Remember, it's always the little things that will make the biggest differences in our lives.

Wild Daisy Homestead.