Return of the Egg Thief

Well, our little egg thief has returned. In fact, he's returned every day since we first caught him in the coop, each time helping himself to 3 or 4 eggs, upsetting all the chickens, and then curling up for a snooze amidst the hay in the corner of the coop. On top of that, I'm pretty sure he does not realize how close he is to losing his tail, if you know what I mean. There are a lot of neighbors and farmers who are ready to come and shoot him for us, since we "seem unable" to do it.....

For now, we've decided to put out a live trap, and hopefully that will nab him, and then we can take him to an area of the forest a few miles away and release him. Now, I fully understand that a raccoon that gets into the coop is usually killed- he will kill as many chickens as he can get his nimble little hands on in one night. But our little possum friend has not really done much damage, other than stealing a few eggs, so I just don't think he deserves to die just yet. We need a little more compassion in our world, especially out here- it seems everyone is constantly trying to kill every bit of wildlife that comes around. But the thing is, we moved out here to get closer to nature, and, well, it looks like that's what's happened. It wouldn't make sense to go killing the very nature that we're trying to connect with, now would it? On the other hand, we work very hard to raise our animals, and we do feel obligated to protect them. So we're in a bit of a bind.

So, anyway, I've learned how to pick a possum up by the tail. I can't officially recommend this- I don't want anyone to go and get bitten and then blame me. But this little guy sure is easy to scoop up. (It turns out he wasn't nearly as scary as I thought. In fact, he even curls his scaly little tail around my hand to hold on!)



I hope this ends well. If I don't write about it again, that probably means it didn't. If he starts to get aggressive and attacks any of the chickens, I'm not sure I will still be able to convince my husband that a live trap is in order. So keep your fingers crossed!

Homemade Eco-Wrap: The Eco-Friendly Way to Wrap Your Presents

So every Christmas, I get this uneasiness in my stomach as the mega-clean-up after present opening begins.... usually we are at a large gathering of friends and family, and an enormous number of presents have been opened, wrapping paper torn to shreds, ribbon thrown to the floor in a mad scramble to see what's inside. And, of course, after all that jubilation, no one wants to stop and separate the recyclable from the unrecyclable, and so it all just gets stuffed into garbage bag upon garbage bag full of paper, ribbon, and cardboard boxes.

But my friend Kim has come up with an eco-solution! Even if her family doesn't recycle the wrapping paper (which I'm sure she would, but when you're at someone else's house, or not there at all when they open their gifts, it's a little imposing to insist on recycling), she re-used old Trader Joe paper shopping bags, turned inside out, and decorated by hand, instead of new, used only once wasteful wrapping paper. And isn't it cute, too?!

Other possibilities: get an old atlas from a thrift store, and wrap in the map pages. Or the funnies from the newspaper always make good wrapping paper, too. And if you're into gift bags instead of wrapping paper, we now carry recycled paper gift bags at The Greater Green, and will be expanding our selection soon to include multiple designs.

The idea is simply this: to avoid using new resources to wrap something. Reuse, recycle, reduce.... in any way you can, and the more creative, the better! Got a cool idea? Please share!