At 5:15???????? You got seedlings blooming already. Can't imagine getting up that early for anything else.

Yuck! Raccoons can be fierce. Also, one of the worst cariers of rabies. Don't want none of them.

Brooke, we have a mama raccoon who lives in our abandoned chicken coop with her yearly offspring. Last night, she came into the house through the dog door, hoisted herself onto the pantry shelves in the mudroom and had herself a feast -- Doritos (Fiery Jabanero, no less), Planters peanuts (got the lid off herself), and every bag of junk food she could get her nimble little hands on. I watched her through the door that separates the mudroom from the kitchen, banged on the door, yelled at her and she just stared at me and continued eating.

There must have been something in the air last night for it to happen at both our houses.

Chris

Wow, what a night you two had. I guess my dh being an ex coon hunter, keeps the fear of God firmly implanted in their little minds. We sometimes have a possum slinking around and really have to watch for groundhogs but the racoons are smart enough to stay away...Ellie

OMG!
Good thing they didn't set up house somewhere inside!
Nancy

At our last DL meeting they had a woman speak that makes her living removing animals that become pests. Some of the stories that she told were similar to these. She said that quite often racoons, skunks and opossums will figure out that there's food on the other side of pet doors and will take advantage of it quite often. One woman went to the kitchen for a drink one night and was met with a party of five racoons gathered around the dog food dish. Dunk it in the water dish and chow down. Said they didn't even run when she turned on the light.

I'd put fixing that screen on the top of the priority list for today. Otherwise you'd better set a few more plates on the table tonight for supper cause you're going to have company. And they won't be bringing a bottle of wine for supper!

Janet

LOL, Janet -- Brooke may just be having a party tonight!

Our dog door will soon be a thing of the past (redoing the kitchen), so the coons will have to dine al fresco again real soon.

Would ya'll believe I don't have to worry about closing the kitchen window right now - it is staying shut until the screen is fixed.

I hate raccoons - two years ago I had one raiding my fish pond eating my fish. My fish respond to any body on the side of the pond, me, dog, cat, whatever because they expect food. What easy pickings for a raccoon. I saw a raccoon body on the side of the road one morning and the raiding stopped. Bless whatever neighbor got it.

When you come visit Ellie, bring the hunter in your family with you. Right now, he can get the raccoon on the porch and Niperella and Bambi in my grove of trees. Obviously, she has given birth, again, and stashing the thing in there. Nip has pruned two of my shrubs on the outside of the garden fence. My buzzers are now back in operation. It won't take her long to figure out the pickings are better on the other side of the fence. Now my worry is the drought - snakes start appearing in the garden when it gets dry. Sometimes living in the country is tough.

Brooke

I don't have raccoons visiting, or at least I haven't seen any. I do have the occasional possom, and recently the dreaded armadillos have been wreaking havoc on my garden beds. My neighbor, who lives about 1/4 mile up the road has been having lots of problems with them, but they had not bothered anything at my house. Well, guess what, they found mine now. So, my Cocker Spaniel, Angel, has been temporarily assigned guard duty and is sleeping on the porch. She's good at running the critters off, and I haven't seen any new signs of them since Angel is on duty at night. If any of you have ever had them, you are well aware of the damage they can do in a garden. They dig up plants, scatter your tags, and generally just make a mess. So, be glad you have raccoons and not armadillos!! :)
Jan

Ah yes, the small bulldozers. They moved into my area about 3 to 4 years ago. And yes, they can make an awful mess. They are difficult to deal with. They mostly make their incursions at night. Apparently, they are a little stupid, have poor eyesight and a poor sense of smell. Makes them hard to trap.

Brooke, if you'll let the grass around your seedling patch grow up to hay I'll send my daughter up there to cut it with the haybine. I think that will take care of the progeny for you. That and turkey eggs....Two down, hundreds to go....

Janet

We don't have raccoons or armadillos, but we do have possums, snakes, squirrels, fire ants and one determined mole. I enjoy watching the squirrels and the birds. But the possum gives me the heebie-jeebies. They are soooo ugly and covered with fleas! My husband and I are tied for snake kills this year...2 for me and 2 for him. None were poisonous, but I don't want 'em in my yard. The fire ants...well, we just chase them around the yard...kill a mound here and a new one pops up over there. But the mole,,, the mole is something else. We've tried poison, traps, and every home remedy you can think of...including putting Exlax in his tunnel. Nothing works. If anyone knows of way to get rid of moles, I'd sure like to hear about it.
Kathy

Husband mowed the field today. The farmer next door used to bale the hay twice a year but keeping the fields mowed was one of the pluses for the tractor to come live in our garage. He said he did not stir Nip out of the grove like he did last year so maybe she isn't using the grove as her maternity ward this year.

Keep the turkeys, please.

Also keep the bulldozers on short legs down south too. Between the skunks and possum digging up newly planted things, I would like to skip the "even dumber than a possum" away from here.

Brooke

Kathy, we have moles out the whazoo here and so far, the traps haven't worked at all. Two outdoor cats like to watch them, but won't kill them (although they do get their share of voles). The only dead one we've found was one that wandered into our swimming pool and either drowned or chlorinated himself to death.

So I guess you need a pool.

Chris, we also have a problem with moles. Our dog Molly came running to the door with a prize dangling from her mouth. All I saw was a long tail and figured she caught a mole. I'm glad because we have horses and if a mole leaves behind poop and horses ingest it...it's really horrible, resulting in death.
Marilyn

Marilyn, I'd never heard that about mole poop and horses -- yikes! But I don't think Molly had a mole, because moles don't have long tails. She must have brought you some other yummy prize.

Ahhhhh...a pool! I knew there had to be a way to get rid of the little devils. If I have to...I have to.
There's a FL lottery commercial on TV - An older couple is sitting on the porch talking about what they will do if they win the lottery. One of them says...we need new tires on the car (camera pans over to an old jalopy). And the other one says...if we have to, we have to.
:-)
Kathy