Composting worm disaster - killer possums

You know that you have been composting for a while when you can tell wild stories about compost. ... and here I go.

I was in the middle of separating composting worms from the vermicompost they created. In the middle of the day I got distracted and never finished the task. In the evening I saw the bin I was using resting quietly on the deck. It was down far enough that there was a high concentration of worms in the compost. I knew it was warm enough and not going to rain, so I left them outside overnight.

The next morning when I awoke I saw a large mess on the deck. Compost was strewn everywhere. Worms where lying all over the deck. Some alive and some dead.

The first round of head scratching lead nowhere. What animal would dig through compost and make such a large mess. We have raccoons, but that didn't seem right for some reason. As I continued to ponder this, I recalled how I also had been noticing spots in the garden that had been dug up. These were normally in areas of high concentrations of compost. So I put the two together and figured whatever was digging in the garden was the same animal that had probably killed a few thousand composting worms.

The garden problem was easy to fix. I put a 1 inch mesh over the areas of the garden where I put fresh compost. The reg wriggle worms that I keep in the garden would be attracted to the compost, and the animal that was digging in my garden would be discouraged by the netting. This worked. I also use this same trick to keep cat from using my garden like a litter box. Every time I dig out the harvested vegetable from the garden, it seems to be an invitation to use the garden as a quick relief spot.

Luckily for me, I got the answer to the mystery that was starting to bug me a few nights later. Our cat (same cat as mentioned above) started meowing in front of the glass door that leads to the vegetable garden. I turned on the light and caught the possum in the act. It wasn't digging, but it was poking around the garden and seemed like it was looking for something.

The solution was also simple. I have a sprinkler that is triggered by movement. When it is turned on, if you walk in front of it you get an 8 second blast of water. This is more than enough to scare away even the most tame creatures from our neighborhood. This sprinkler was set up for a week pointing at the gardening to protect it. That along with the bare areas in the garden being covered with netting discouraged the possums from poking around my garden.