A Countess Von Nibbles Family Update

Remember a couple months ago when I introduced you to Countess Von Nibbles, our friendly doormat nibbling groundhog? Well, the Countess was apparently knocked up, because she had TWO babies! That’s right, Salt and Pepper Von Nibbles joined the Von Nibbles family. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t get an announcement either.

For the first few weeks, we’d see them hanging out together like a happy, fuzzy family in the front yard. But then, the Von Nibbles twins decided that it was time for them to move out and get their own apartment.

In our back yard.

While the front yard is totally fair game for our groundhog friends, the back yard is NOT the best place for them because that is Ollie’s domain. We actually have a small part of our back yard fenced in behind our house, which makes it super easy for us to let Ollie out for his walks while we sit inside in the AC and be lazy. Once the Von Nibbles twins moved into their new home under the sunroom, I’d spot them out in the back yard nibbling on grass.

When I’d open the sun room door, they’d run their pudgy behinds back under the sun room so that Ollie could come out and do his thing. The problem was… they started moving slower and slower once they realized that an 8 pound chorkie isn’t really much of a threat. As much as I love me some whistle pigs, I didn’t want to have to break up a chorkie/groundhog fight… so we decided to re-home them.

My husband brought home an animal trap from work (quite a handy perk there) and we baited it with cantaloupe after reading on the internet that groundhogs LOVE cantaloupe. And if you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, what can you believe?

We baited the trap and the next day by time we came home from work, we had trapped Pepper Von Nibbles:

LOOK AT HOW CUTE HE IS!?!?! This is the point where I almost backed out of our plan. He’s so adorable and I love seeing the twins in the back yard… but there was no going back now. We drove him about 10 miles away and found a happy little field with deer and woods nearby.

Then, we baited the trap again. The next day, we caught Salt Von Nibbles. I guess he didn’t learn from watching his brother… or maybe the deliciousness of cantaloupe was just too much to resist. Any which way, Travis took him to the exact same spot as his brother and hopefully they have found each other and rebuilt a little bunk bed for two.

Or, maybe they are working their way back to our house and will be back in our yard by next week…