Without even trying, we caught another woodchuck this weekend. After our first catch and release a few weeks back, I baited the trap again and left it out. Time, heat and possibly tiny critters caused the decay and eventual dissappearance of the bait. But lo and behold on Saturday afternoon there was another woodchuck in the trap. Of course I was in the middle of about four different things when I discovered our captive, but not knowing exactly how long he'd been in the cage, I dropped everything and drove him out to a nice woodsy area near some water. This is apparently the lazy person's way to catch woodchucks, just leave the trap set and see who shows up...

Last weekend brought our first harvest of rhubarb. We've got three patches of it growing on our property. Two patches are out in the garden and one is on the side of the compost pile. The first recipe I tried was Blink of an Eye Rhubarb Cobbler. It was pretty good and quite easy. The second recipe was the clincher though - Rhubarb Bread. This makes up a very moist and tasty quick bread that received compliments and recipe requests at both of our offices. I haven't had rhubarb in maybe twenty years. In all that time you can rest assured it hasn't changed much. The astringent scent released as I cut the rhubarb was very, very familiar, as was that particular flavor in the final product. Did you know that it's actually classified as a vegetable?

These pictures are for Mindy's benefit over at The Fixer Upper. She's looking for pictures of more Italianate porches to get ideas for their Italianate.

For those of you who may be grieving over the relocation of yon quadruped from his happily poached perch, please note the follow quote from Wikipedia, regarding attempts at the harmonious mixture of human and groundhog:

Doug Schwartz, a zookeeper and groundhog trainer at the Staten Island Zoo, has been quoted as saying "They’re known for their aggression, so you’re starting from a hard place. [Their] natural impulse is to kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. You have to work to produce the sweet and cuddly."

Reminds me of parenting a two-year-old, come to think of it...

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm Marlon Perkins and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom." What we have here is a woodchuck, AKA groundhog, or whistlepig. These furry little guys can be quite destructive and we've got a tunnel under our shed to prove it. My dad advised us to get a Havahart Trap to capture the little nuisance. Um, thanks Dad... this link's for you.

Apparently, Ol' Woodie Woodchuck likes apples, because we came home from work tonight and found him in our trap. Dinner plans were quickly scrapped (I didn't feel like cooking anyway - though in hindsight, I guess if we were enterprising enough we could have had fresh woodchuck kebabs.) and we took a little drive to the country to release our captive marmot. This only after little T-man spotted him and proclaimed, "I wike him." That's great kid, don't get too close to the caged animal with the sharp claws and teeth, not to mention the fact that he smells like a million damp, dirty gym socks left in the sun for a month or two inside a sealed Hefty sack. Listen, Woodie, it's nothing personal, but a little grooming would go a long way, if you know what I mean.

We took Woodie to a nice woodsie place in the country and set him free. I barely had the cage open when he took off like a shot into the underbrush. Hopefully we don't see him back in our yard in a couple of days, but just to be sure, and because I suspect he may have some drinking buddies hanging around, I've reset the trap with a fresh apple.