People who live within suburbs often have to contend with small animals and can find it difficult protecting bare plants, vegetables especially from being eaten. Gardeners get much pained at noticing the loss of plants which have taken weeks to mature, being chewed down to ground level.
It is important to nonetheless restrain you from harming the critters, their destructiveness notwithstanding. They are not just malicious, but opportunistic and hungry. Groundhogs have stubby little legs for instance and can consume everything within their reach. This happens quite fast as well and has potential of stopping you from gardening at your premises.
Live trapping is among the best courses to take in order to eradicate a stray groundhog. The one having spring loaded door gets openly held with a catch, closing once an animal steps on the trigger inside the trap. Such traps enable you catch an animal that is small without causing any harm on it, before getting released. You can put in some items of food within the trap and on ground that leads up to it around the area which the animal frequently visits. Open up and set the door then wait and you will at some point notice the hungry critter attempting to consume the easy meal, before it gets trapped.
Two main challenges however arise when using this trapping system. First is the inconvenience of having to release the animal at a place far off from your property, to keep it from returning to your home. Another problem is of trapping the wrong animals.
Raccoons, skunks and opossums may not pose real problems at times, but releasing them could pose some danger to you. Opossums for instance may not wish to leave the trap and play possum once approached, lying in that position for extensive time periods. The sure way of getting this animal out is by propping open the trap near safe neighborhood, such as close to trees. You may slide the opossum just underneath the open door in order to prevent it from reclosing, with the help of a long and thin stick. The animal will normally soon wake up and casually wander away.
Raccoons can cause more difficulty getting released, being quite vicious while you slide open the door to release them into the wild. You can avoid capturing unintended animals by closing the cage right before dark, if they are nocturnal in nature.