Since my last report, Goober came back to our back porch twice to eat the food we’d set out for him: once between 12 and 2 PM on Saturday, which Jen missed because she was asleep (we’ve been getting very little sleep lately), and once at 1 AM on Sunday, when Jen spotted him but couldn’t catch him — as soon as she opened the door, he was off.

We couldn’t stay up 24 hours a day for the one or two times Goober decided to show up, and then run away — by this point we were starting to show the effects of extreme sleep deprivation. Fortunately, Jen had begun exploring another option.

She’d been told that the town had some live traps that perhaps we could borrow. She tried making some enquiries on Saturday; by Sunday she learned that the town had had three live traps, but they’d been lent out to persons unknown (or at least unrecorded at the time) and they no longer had any. Luckily for my nerves — because this had been seen as our last option — it occurred to us to see if we could buy one. The local Canadian Tire had one in stock, which Jen nabbed; it cost around $50.

We set it up on our back porch yesterday afternoon, with food and other familiar comforts. So far, he hasn’t taken the bait. Which is to say that he hasn’t been back, so far as we know, since Jen’s attempt to grab him after midnight Sunday morning. I hope that didn’t scare him off.

Weather is presenting a new complication: winter has decided to make up for lost time. It’s snowing like hell right now; about 5 cm are forecast. Then, once the snow is done, temperatures are supposed to plunge: the forecast low for Wednesday is -29°C. For the rest of the week, it’s either going to be snowing or extremely cold. I don’t know if he’ll come out in either, and I have no idea how cold it can get before it damages or kills him.

It is a point of some frustration to me that we didn’t think of the live trap sooner. If we had, we might well have caught him by now. But then we didn’t expect him not to want to be found.