Six weeks, eleven witnesses, and one very patient West Virginia homeowner later, here is what actually works — and what absolutely does not.

Donna Pelletier of Ronceverte, West Virginia, did not ask for a Sheepsquatch. She would like that noted at the outset, and I am noting it. She bought her property in 2019, has maintained good relations with every neighbour within half a mile, feeds the birds responsibly, and keeps her porch light on a sensible timer. None of this, it turns out, is a deterrent. The creature — described by Donna and ten additional witnesses over the course of six weeks as large, pale, wool-adjacent in texture, and in possession of a smell that one neighbour characterised as ‘a wool sweater that has had a difficult life’ — began appearing on her back porch in early April and showed no signs of relocating of its own volition. Donna, being a methodical woman, decided to document what she tried. She sent me her notes in a spiral-bound notebook with colour-coded tabs. I have read them in full. Here is my honest assessment.

Methods One Through Three: The Optimistic Phase

The first three weeks of Donna’s deterrent campaign fall into what I would call the hopeful category — methods sourced from online forums, a Facebook group called Appalachian Anomalies & Neighbours, and one pamphlet of uncertain provenance that arrived in her mailbox without a return address. Week one: motion-activated sprinklers, set to maximum sensitivity. Result, per Donna’s notes: ‘Wet porch. Wet me. Creature stood at the edge of the spray radius and appeared to wait.’ Week two: commercial-grade predator urine, purchased from a hunting supply outlet. Result: ‘Attracted something else. Unrelated. Do not recommend.’ Week three: a wind chime arrangement recommended by three separate forum members as a vibration deterrent, hung across the full width of the porch. Result: ‘Creature sat beneath it for forty minutes on Tuesday. Neighbour Dale asked if I was opening a spa.’ Effectiveness ratings from Donna’s own notebook: one star, half a star, and a small drawing of a frowning face, respectively.

Community Notice

I wasn’t trying to harm it. I just wanted it off the porch before my sister’s graduation party. That’s all I asked. Six weeks. One party. You would think.

— Donna Pelletier, Ronceverte homeowner

Methods Four Through Six: The Escalation

By week four, Donna had moved into what her colour-coded system designates the ‘orange tab’ phase, which she explains in a footnote as ‘more committed.’ A retired forestry worker two counties over — name withheld at his request, which I respect — had advised via telephone that strong aromatic deterrents were worth attempting. Donna deployed cedar oil along the porch perimeter, followed in week five by a combination of white vinegar, dried rosemary, and something she describes only as ‘the third thing Sandra recommended.’ I have not pressed Donna on the third thing. Some methodologies deserve their privacy. Week five results: inconclusive, though Donna notes the creature appeared to sneeze once, which she recorded as a partial success. Week six brought the most significant intervention: Donna’s brother-in-law, a man named Terry who owns a pressure washer and considerable confidence, arrived on a Saturday morning and spent four hours treating the porch, the steps, and approximately eight feet of lawn with a proprietary blend he declined to specify. The creature returned that evening. Terry has not been back.

What Donna’s notebook ultimately concludes — in the final three pages, written in a slightly different pen, which suggests she drafted them separately and with more deliberation — is that the creature stopped appearing on the porch in the second week of May without any clear correlation to her final interventions. It simply ceased. Her working hypothesis, which she offers with the careful language of a person who has thought about this longer than she anticipated, is that it was passing through. That the porch was convenient. That it had somewhere else to be. She rates this outcome three stars: ‘Not ideal in process, acceptable in resolution, would not repeat, cannot guarantee.’ I think that is a fair review. I have seen worse methodology and worse documentation, and I have encountered Sheepsquatch reports in which the resolution involved considerably more disruption to neighbourly relations than one suspicious wind chime and a pressure washer.

She handled it with more composure than most. The spray pattern on her lawn is going to be visible until July, but beyond that she’s come through it sensibly.

— Name withheld, retired forestry worker, two counties from Ronceverte

I keep a small bag of dried herbs in my left cardigan pocket. I have never been asked to write a lifestyle piece about it. I mention this only to say that some deterrents are personal, some are inherited, and some are six weeks of pressure washers and wind chimes that end with the problem departing on its own schedule regardless. Donna Pelletier’s documentation is thorough, her star ratings are honest, and her sister’s graduation party was, by all accounts, lovely. The porch is currently unoccupied. She has not yet repainted the steps. She tells me she is thinking about it, but she is in no particular hurry.