10 ms·

How to Kill a Possum

44 points by samclemens 9y ago

merpnderp 9y ago
Why doesn't this lady own a dog. A terrier would be delighted to defend the chickens from predators and would be happy to feast off the chickens who don't make it.
trhway 9y ago
animal cruelty committed with no remorse, empathy, etc... - pretty much textbook picture of a psychopath. (note that while pest status of animal does grant the right to kill it, it doesn't grant the right to torture.)
- sctb 9y ago
  Whatever your judgement of the author, comments here still need to be civil and substantive. Speculation about the mental health of others is neither. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - trhway 9y ago
    >Speculation about the mental health of others is neither. i didn't speculate about her mental state. I stated that described behavior matches behavior exhibited by a psychopath. She may be a psychopath, or may have been just dead drunk/high or the story may be not real, or whatever - i don't know those facts. I commented on described behavior - the described behavior is clearly psychopathic, whether it happened or not. I think California prohibits videos of animal torture and such detailed description is pretty close to it. I hope somebody reports this story to authorities, either on the grounds of animal cruelty perpetrated or its public description.
- mberning 9y ago
  Completely agree. I can't believe how much of a pass this person is getting on here. The only thing you need to know is that the author had known about the possum issue for some considerable amount of time but didn't prepare any means of dispatching the animal prior to capture.
Diederich 9y ago
> it's very difficult .... [to] shoot the life out of a wild creature. As others have noted, it depends on a lot of things, but most of all the energy of the cartridge in question. While farming in rural Missouri, I found myself needed to end the lives of a number of animals over the years. In that pursuit, I always used this cartridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield This is suitable to kill any creature found in North America, except for perhaps the largest of bears. Unfortunately, it is exceptionally loud and not something to be used outside of very rural environments. Disclaimer: some people will find the following story very uncomfortable to read. (It's rather uncomfortable to write) I relay it only to emphasize the fact that in all matters related to bullets and damage, there's an enormous amount of random chance involved. A friend of ours was retired, but she raised a fair number of goats for milk and profit. Her financial well being waxed and wained over time, but she happened to find herself with no extra money, and a very sick and dying goat. She could not bring herself to shoot the goat herself, so she asked me to do it as a very unpleasant but needful favor, since she (at that point in time) lacked the money to take it to a vet to have it put down. (That's a rather expensive thing, even in rural areas, including disposal.) She also didn't have a large enough property to leave a carcass out for natural consumption. I had plenty of isolated, forested acres. She lived about 10 miles away, so I took my pickup over there. The goat was laying on the ground, writhing and screaming. Goat screams are awful. I put the goat into my pickup as gently as I could and drove back home. It was already a pretty unhappy set of circumstances, but it was going get worse. I drove to the back side of my property, in the woods, and gently laid the poor beast on the ground. Chambering a big .30-06, I put my foot firmly on her neck, took careful aim right at her head, and fired. To the uninitiated: this is a big, powerful round. Fired into the ground, it will leave a good sized pit behind. It passes right through 1/4 inch steel. I expected a big mess and a completely dead goat. Somehow, it had blasted away most of the goat's skull above and including her right eye, but it left her brain completely intact. She twisted, directed her remaining eye at me, and screamed again. The second shot went directly into her exposed brain and that was that. I'm not sure why I'm sharing this sordid story, except that, once again, when dealing with objects at high energies, almost anything can happen.
shoover 9y ago
Ugh. Possum stench is unreal. We already had a possum get in the cat house when we were on vacation and the cat food was left out each night. For now the cat house is put away and we are sure to bring the food in at dark. I'm not looking forward to dealing with this process if the possum messes with the cat house when we bring it back out for the winter.
- shoover 9y ago
  I spoke too soon. We were an hour late getting the food in tonight and sure enough it was back in the food. They must "round" every night. One down. At least this article helped with mental preparations. I wish there was something more preventative we could do. Probably just not have outdoor cats and not care what creeps around at night. Having chickens and active predators all the time would be a different story altogether.
hprotagonist 9y ago
One of the odd consequences of urban farming, I just realized, is that the traditionally correct answer for this kind of pest control (a .22 or a pellet gun) is no longer really an option. Drowning is a lot harder.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > the traditionally correct answer for this kind of pest control (a .22 or a pellet gun) is no longer really an option. I think a .22 would be reasonable in a suburban environment, as long as you've got your target critter pinned down, and aren't just trying to shoot it off the fence. Plus, it seems like it would have been a perfectly valid alternative for the author, if not for her gun views. > Drowning is a lot harder. Seems less humane, too. Aren't there better options than drowning? Can't you stick 'em in a bag and use a car exhaust?
  - hprotagonist 9y ago
    you can. Or in a confined environment with dry ice (which is just CO2). What the author describes in this piece is the inadvertent cruelty that basically has to happen when you lack the experience for a clean kill. Duct-taping a knife to the end of a stick is, under any other circumstance, just kind of funny. In this case, it's close to unethical.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      The whole time I was reading that, I was thinking to myself - do you not own an axe that you can bring down on the possum's neck? But I guess I'm still thinking in the context of my parents' house where I grew up, where you can just go out to the garage and stumble over half-a-dozen improvised mammal murder instruments on the way to the one you specifically had in mind.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        It's tangled up in chicken wire, so an axe presents most of the same problems as a shovel.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
My parents briefly toyed with the idea of raising chickens, in rural Texas. They decided not to because of the snakes, and knowing now the amount of work that goes into it, I'm glad they didn't. Not that they'd have trouble killing possums; they've solved rat problems with the judicious application of a bolt action .22 rifle before, which seems like a rather reasonable sort of fire-arm for the author to own - it's basically a step up from the BB gun, but actually useful. (And can be made safe for a household with children by taking the bolt out and locking it up.)
- dogma1138 9y ago
  I would not call a .22 LR a step up from a BB gun... Unless you are talking about a hunting air rifle a BB gun won't even break skin any 22 LR even fired from a pistol will go through bone and can easily kill a person.
- lebanon_tn 9y ago
  I'm utterly horrified that she attempted to dispatch the possum with a BB gun. The animal suffered far more than it should have.
- willvarfar 9y ago
  (I found shooting rats pretty ineffective for controlling them - you never see them as they are nocturnal and subterranean. If you see a rat, it means you've got hundreds! A gun is an effective way to kill rats that have been caught, though. I'd recommend a good air rifle over the .22 though; much quieter and cheaper.)
asciimo 9y ago
This is a horror story. This is how she dealt with the first animal: > I had to ram the blade of the shovel into the head of that animal about 30 times before it actually died. And the second: > I emptied an entire barrel full of shot into the possum, aiming for its head. After 50 pulls, I ran out of BBs. > I would have sharpened the knife first, but now I was just committed to using the wrong tool for the job. It was terrible. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, grunting and screeching a little with the effort. At one point, the possum grabbed onto the knife with its teeth and had enough life left to gnaw at the tape with such ferocity I thought it would wrest the knife from the broomstick. And the eight babies of the second animal: > I grabbed each tiny sneezing possum, plopped it into the bucket, and covered the top with an old piece of plywood. When it was over, I put all eight bodies, along with their mother, to rest in the municipal green bin. Thank God for Bay Area household composting. This is little more than the cold recollections of a murderer. She exhibits no growth, no regret. She admits that the small amount of compassion she would have for her chickens would be due to "peer pressure." At least this article is an excellent resource to share with would-be urban farmers.
- hprotagonist 9y ago
  >This is little more than the cold recollections of a murderer. There's (arguably) nothing particularly unacceptable about killing possums per se. There's a _lot_ that's unacceptable about killing them inhumanely, and even more when it's presented in a way that doesn't suggest that the author tried to learn better ways.
  - labster 9y ago
    Actually read the article before commenting please. She made it clear that she tried several ways, looked online for help, and the most humane option is illegal.
    - Osmium 9y ago
      > and the most humane option is illegal. There are lots of 'humane' ways of killing animals that do not involve firearms (this is the illegal option given in the article). Note that the author still tried an illegal method regardless (the BB gun, which is a projectile weapon). > I had a brainwave. “I’m getting the blowtorch!” Brilliant! I could burn the possum. I'd hope this was a poor attempt at humor, but given the actual methods attempted, who knows. > I pathetically consulted my iPhone for ideas If you need to consult your iPhone on how to humanely put down an animal, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Especially if you find some random advice about duck taping a knife to a broom handle and then follow it. This whole article is horrifying.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jjtheblunt 9y ago
this is shameful exposition of a shithead
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 9y ago
There's a lesson here about ethics. A BB gun should not be shot at anything alive. You will only injure the animal, causing pain and suffering. If you're going to shoot something, make an ethical kill that is instantaneous. .22LR is no good for anything larger than a rat. Soft point or hollow point 5.56mm is very cheap and is reliable up to anything smaller than a coyote. .300 blackout can take a large hog.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  There's a lesson here about reading the article. The author is a staunch opponent of the 2nd amendment, refuses to own a gun, and lives in a place where discharging one is illegal.
  - pc86 9y ago
    The point was that a BB is not the right tool for a job. Using it because that's "the best you can do" is downright sociopathic. Nobody was making an argument they should use a real gun, or break the law, or compromise their beliefs, or anything of the sort, just that a BB gun is not an appropriate tool for what they wanted to do.
  - exabrial 9y ago
    I did read the article... ?
- refurb 9y ago
  It's more about shot placement than calibre. It's not uncommon to euthanize cattle with 22LR. Of course, you need perfect shot placement for it to be humane. Animal brains don't tend to be in the part of the head we think they are. Not to be too graphic, but moving from 22LR to 5.56mm is a huge jump. It's not unusual for a possum-sized animal to "explode" when hit with 5.56mm out of a rifle. Gophers (ground squirrels) certainly do if you watch the Youtube videos.
- GlenTheMachine 9y ago
  Incorrect. A .22 is the perfect weapon for possum, raccoon, groundhogs, and other assorted pests. I personally keep a single shot .22 for precisely this purpose. You do have to practice so you can reliably make kill shots with it.
namiller2 9y ago
Opossum.
- eighthnate 9y ago
  My favorite scrabble word. My friend thought he blocked me from a triple word score by putting possum in front of triple word square. I put "box" on the triple word score and connect it with opossum and won the game. We had a huge argument that opossum wasn't a word. We didn't have a scrabble dictionary so we had to confer with a couple of dictionaries before he conceded.
JBReefer 9y ago
Does this person represent the average Californian? She seems so disconnected from everything, it's kind of sad. The fact she seriously considered a blowtorch is disturbing. I did enjoy that she recognizes that her political positions may have flaws, and worked through some cognitive dissonance about the utility of firearms, and she has a strong artistic voice, to her credit. Is this what people in Oakland are like? There's something so sad about this story.
- itbeho 9y ago
  It's not Oakland - plenty of great people there.
Yetanfou 9y ago
This might be unrelated but in a way it is not. Why do so many people insist on "checking their iPhone" or "using my iPhone as lamp" or "getting my iPhone" or "consulting my iPhone" or, well, anything "my iPhone". I literally never met anyone telling me they'd just whip out their Samsung, check their Motorola, consult their Nokia or get their whatever brand of phone they happen to use, they just "check their phone" or "use their phone" or "get their phone". Why do those using Apple-logoed devices insist on educating the world on the presence of just that logo on their devices? I'd feel just silly doing something like that, like I was being used as a tool.
relics443 9y ago
My dad loves telling the story of how he had a contractor working on his house in NYC area, and heard a garbage can rattling. He opened the can to find a full grown possum. The contractor lazily grabbed a 2x4, whacked the possum in the head, took it out by the tail and threw it to his son, yelling "we got one for supper."
mcguire 9y ago
Suddenly, the fact that I've spent my entire life avoiding ranching (my mother's side of the family are almost all ranchers) seems like the best decision I've ever made.
itbeho 9y ago
I live on acreage outside city limits and have had to dispatch the occasional varmint. However, I would not suggest a firearm (or airgun) in a city environment, especially not one like Oakland, where intent may be hard to judge by authorities, and local ordinances might land one in legal jeopardy. My suggestion in this scenario would be to purchase a Havahart live trap. Bait it with a little canned tuna fish or peanut butter. Catch the offending critter and call the local animal control agency. They will come out and take care of it for you. In some cases animal control will lend you a trap if you have an ongoing problem.

44 points by samclemens 9y ago

Why doesn't this lady own a dog. A terrier would be delighted to defend the chickens from predators and would be happy to feast off the chickens who don't make it.

trhway 9y ago

animal cruelty committed with no remorse, empathy, etc... - pretty much textbook picture of a psychopath. (note that while pest status of animal does grant the right to kill it, it doesn't grant the right to torture.)

sctb 9y ago
Whatever your judgement of the author, comments here still need to be civil and substantive. Speculation about the mental health of others is neither. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- trhway 9y ago
  >Speculation about the mental health of others is neither. i didn't speculate about her mental state. I stated that described behavior matches behavior exhibited by a psychopath. She may be a psychopath, or may have been just dead drunk/high or the story may be not real, or whatever - i don't know those facts. I commented on described behavior - the described behavior is clearly psychopathic, whether it happened or not. I think California prohibits videos of animal torture and such detailed description is pretty close to it. I hope somebody reports this story to authorities, either on the grounds of animal cruelty perpetrated or its public description.
mberning 9y ago
Completely agree. I can't believe how much of a pass this person is getting on here. The only thing you need to know is that the author had known about the possum issue for some considerable amount of time but didn't prepare any means of dispatching the animal prior to capture.

Diederich 9y ago

> it's very difficult .... [to] shoot the life out of a wild creature. As others have noted, it depends on a lot of things, but most of all the energy of the cartridge in question. While farming in rural Missouri, I found myself needed to end the lives of a number of animals over the years. In that pursuit, I always used this cartridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield This is suitable to kill any creature found in North America, except for perhaps the largest of bears. Unfortunately, it is exceptionally loud and not something to be used outside of very rural environments. Disclaimer: some people will find the following story very uncomfortable to read. (It's rather uncomfortable to write) I relay it only to emphasize the fact that in all matters related to bullets and damage, there's an enormous amount of random chance involved. A friend of ours was retired, but she raised a fair number of goats for milk and profit. Her financial well being waxed and wained over time, but she happened to find herself with no extra money, and a very sick and dying goat. She could not bring herself to shoot the goat herself, so she asked me to do it as a very unpleasant but needful favor, since she (at that point in time) lacked the money to take it to a vet to have it put down. (That's a rather expensive thing, even in rural areas, including disposal.) She also didn't have a large enough property to leave a carcass out for natural consumption. I had plenty of isolated, forested acres. She lived about 10 miles away, so I took my pickup over there. The goat was laying on the ground, writhing and screaming. Goat screams are awful. I put the goat into my pickup as gently as I could and drove back home. It was already a pretty unhappy set of circumstances, but it was going get worse. I drove to the back side of my property, in the woods, and gently laid the poor beast on the ground. Chambering a big .30-06, I put my foot firmly on her neck, took careful aim right at her head, and fired. To the uninitiated: this is a big, powerful round. Fired into the ground, it will leave a good sized pit behind. It passes right through 1/4 inch steel. I expected a big mess and a completely dead goat. Somehow, it had blasted away most of the goat's skull above and including her right eye, but it left her brain completely intact. She twisted, directed her remaining eye at me, and screamed again. The second shot went directly into her exposed brain and that was that. I'm not sure why I'm sharing this sordid story, except that, once again, when dealing with objects at high energies, almost anything can happen.

shoover 9y ago

Ugh. Possum stench is unreal. We already had a possum get in the cat house when we were on vacation and the cat food was left out each night. For now the cat house is put away and we are sure to bring the food in at dark. I'm not looking forward to dealing with this process if the possum messes with the cat house when we bring it back out for the winter.

shoover 9y ago
I spoke too soon. We were an hour late getting the food in tonight and sure enough it was back in the food. They must "round" every night. One down. At least this article helped with mental preparations. I wish there was something more preventative we could do. Probably just not have outdoor cats and not care what creeps around at night. Having chickens and active predators all the time would be a different story altogether.

hprotagonist 9y ago

One of the odd consequences of urban farming, I just realized, is that the traditionally correct answer for this kind of pest control (a .22 or a pellet gun) is no longer really an option. Drowning is a lot harder.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
> the traditionally correct answer for this kind of pest control (a .22 or a pellet gun) is no longer really an option. I think a .22 would be reasonable in a suburban environment, as long as you've got your target critter pinned down, and aren't just trying to shoot it off the fence. Plus, it seems like it would have been a perfectly valid alternative for the author, if not for her gun views. > Drowning is a lot harder. Seems less humane, too. Aren't there better options than drowning? Can't you stick 'em in a bag and use a car exhaust?
- hprotagonist 9y ago
  you can. Or in a confined environment with dry ice (which is just CO2). What the author describes in this piece is the inadvertent cruelty that basically has to happen when you lack the experience for a clean kill. Duct-taping a knife to the end of a stick is, under any other circumstance, just kind of funny. In this case, it's close to unethical.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    The whole time I was reading that, I was thinking to myself - do you not own an axe that you can bring down on the possum's neck? But I guess I'm still thinking in the context of my parents' house where I grew up, where you can just go out to the garage and stumble over half-a-dozen improvised mammal murder instruments on the way to the one you specifically had in mind.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      It's tangled up in chicken wire, so an axe presents most of the same problems as a shovel.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

My parents briefly toyed with the idea of raising chickens, in rural Texas. They decided not to because of the snakes, and knowing now the amount of work that goes into it, I'm glad they didn't. Not that they'd have trouble killing possums; they've solved rat problems with the judicious application of a bolt action .22 rifle before, which seems like a rather reasonable sort of fire-arm for the author to own - it's basically a step up from the BB gun, but actually useful. (And can be made safe for a household with children by taking the bolt out and locking it up.)

dogma1138 9y ago
I would not call a .22 LR a step up from a BB gun... Unless you are talking about a hunting air rifle a BB gun won't even break skin any 22 LR even fired from a pistol will go through bone and can easily kill a person.
lebanon_tn 9y ago
I'm utterly horrified that she attempted to dispatch the possum with a BB gun. The animal suffered far more than it should have.
willvarfar 9y ago
(I found shooting rats pretty ineffective for controlling them - you never see them as they are nocturnal and subterranean. If you see a rat, it means you've got hundreds! A gun is an effective way to kill rats that have been caught, though. I'd recommend a good air rifle over the .22 though; much quieter and cheaper.)

asciimo 9y ago

This is a horror story. This is how she dealt with the first animal: > I had to ram the blade of the shovel into the head of that animal about 30 times before it actually died. And the second: > I emptied an entire barrel full of shot into the possum, aiming for its head. After 50 pulls, I ran out of BBs. > I would have sharpened the knife first, but now I was just committed to using the wrong tool for the job. It was terrible. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, grunting and screeching a little with the effort. At one point, the possum grabbed onto the knife with its teeth and had enough life left to gnaw at the tape with such ferocity I thought it would wrest the knife from the broomstick. And the eight babies of the second animal: > I grabbed each tiny sneezing possum, plopped it into the bucket, and covered the top with an old piece of plywood. When it was over, I put all eight bodies, along with their mother, to rest in the municipal green bin. Thank God for Bay Area household composting. This is little more than the cold recollections of a murderer. She exhibits no growth, no regret. She admits that the small amount of compassion she would have for her chickens would be due to "peer pressure." At least this article is an excellent resource to share with would-be urban farmers.

hprotagonist 9y ago
>This is little more than the cold recollections of a murderer. There's (arguably) nothing particularly unacceptable about killing possums per se. There's a _lot_ that's unacceptable about killing them inhumanely, and even more when it's presented in a way that doesn't suggest that the author tried to learn better ways.
- labster 9y ago
  Actually read the article before commenting please. She made it clear that she tried several ways, looked online for help, and the most humane option is illegal.
  - Osmium 9y ago
    > and the most humane option is illegal. There are lots of 'humane' ways of killing animals that do not involve firearms (this is the illegal option given in the article). Note that the author still tried an illegal method regardless (the BB gun, which is a projectile weapon). > I had a brainwave. “I’m getting the blowtorch!” Brilliant! I could burn the possum. I'd hope this was a poor attempt at humor, but given the actual methods attempted, who knows. > I pathetically consulted my iPhone for ideas If you need to consult your iPhone on how to humanely put down an animal, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Especially if you find some random advice about duck taping a knife to a broom handle and then follow it. This whole article is horrifying.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jjtheblunt 9y ago

this is shameful exposition of a shithead

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 9y ago

There's a lesson here about ethics. A BB gun should not be shot at anything alive. You will only injure the animal, causing pain and suffering. If you're going to shoot something, make an ethical kill that is instantaneous. .22LR is no good for anything larger than a rat. Soft point or hollow point 5.56mm is very cheap and is reliable up to anything smaller than a coyote. .300 blackout can take a large hog.

knieveltech 9y ago
There's a lesson here about reading the article. The author is a staunch opponent of the 2nd amendment, refuses to own a gun, and lives in a place where discharging one is illegal.
- pc86 9y ago
  The point was that a BB is not the right tool for a job. Using it because that's "the best you can do" is downright sociopathic. Nobody was making an argument they should use a real gun, or break the law, or compromise their beliefs, or anything of the sort, just that a BB gun is not an appropriate tool for what they wanted to do.
- exabrial 9y ago
  I did read the article... ?
refurb 9y ago
It's more about shot placement than calibre. It's not uncommon to euthanize cattle with 22LR. Of course, you need perfect shot placement for it to be humane. Animal brains don't tend to be in the part of the head we think they are. Not to be too graphic, but moving from 22LR to 5.56mm is a huge jump. It's not unusual for a possum-sized animal to "explode" when hit with 5.56mm out of a rifle. Gophers (ground squirrels) certainly do if you watch the Youtube videos.
GlenTheMachine 9y ago
Incorrect. A .22 is the perfect weapon for possum, raccoon, groundhogs, and other assorted pests. I personally keep a single shot .22 for precisely this purpose. You do have to practice so you can reliably make kill shots with it.

namiller2 9y ago

Opossum.

eighthnate 9y ago
My favorite scrabble word. My friend thought he blocked me from a triple word score by putting possum in front of triple word square. I put "box" on the triple word score and connect it with opossum and won the game. We had a huge argument that opossum wasn't a word. We didn't have a scrabble dictionary so we had to confer with a couple of dictionaries before he conceded.

JBReefer 9y ago

Does this person represent the average Californian? She seems so disconnected from everything, it's kind of sad. The fact she seriously considered a blowtorch is disturbing. I did enjoy that she recognizes that her political positions may have flaws, and worked through some cognitive dissonance about the utility of firearms, and she has a strong artistic voice, to her credit. Is this what people in Oakland are like? There's something so sad about this story.

itbeho 9y ago
It's not Oakland - plenty of great people there.

Yetanfou 9y ago

This might be unrelated but in a way it is not. Why do so many people insist on "checking their iPhone" or "using my iPhone as lamp" or "getting my iPhone" or "consulting my iPhone" or, well, anything "my iPhone". I literally never met anyone telling me they'd just whip out their Samsung, check their Motorola, consult their Nokia or get their whatever brand of phone they happen to use, they just "check their phone" or "use their phone" or "get their phone". Why do those using Apple-logoed devices insist on educating the world on the presence of just that logo on their devices? I'd feel just silly doing something like that, like I was being used as a tool.

relics443 9y ago

My dad loves telling the story of how he had a contractor working on his house in NYC area, and heard a garbage can rattling. He opened the can to find a full grown possum. The contractor lazily grabbed a 2x4, whacked the possum in the head, took it out by the tail and threw it to his son, yelling "we got one for supper."

mcguire 9y ago

Suddenly, the fact that I've spent my entire life avoiding ranching (my mother's side of the family are almost all ranchers) seems like the best decision I've ever made.

itbeho 9y ago

I live on acreage outside city limits and have had to dispatch the occasional varmint. However, I would not suggest a firearm (or airgun) in a city environment, especially not one like Oakland, where intent may be hard to judge by authorities, and local ordinances might land one in legal jeopardy. My suggestion in this scenario would be to purchase a Havahart live trap. Bait it with a little canned tuna fish or peanut butter. Catch the offending critter and call the local animal control agency. They will come out and take care of it for you. In some cases animal control will lend you a trap if you have an ongoing problem.