Rumble in the Jungle
For a few nights, racoons have been coming up onto our deck and eating the dogs' food. Once they had gone so far as to come into our laundry room, but we started closing off the doggy door.
What surprised me most about the whole racoon thing was that I never heard them. Not while they were in the house, not while they were rolling the dog food bin twenty feet from where I was sleeping. Admittedly I do sleep with earplugs at night, but still. I would have thought that at the very least the dogs would have woken up, and I am normally pretty alert to the puppies who sleep right next to my bed.
Tonight the Pirate and I had stayed up kind of late to watch a James Cagney picture, then I stayed up even later to read. At a little past one something splashed in the creek. The Pirate and I looked at each other, then got up and went out to the deck to look. We could see racoons splashing in the middle of the creek, then almost immediately there was the noise of some kind of fight.
IN THIS CORNER: We have something that has the bark of a small dog, punctuated with high-pitched growls and occasional screams and yelps.
IN THIS CORNER: We have something that continually whistles like a guinea pig in distress.
The battle raged on, moving up the slope on the other side of the creek from us toward where our neighbors keep their horses. I can't believe they didn't hear it too. The Pirate fetched the paintball gun and shot into the trees and for a full two minutes all was quiet. But then it started all over again, the barking and the whistling drifting off downstream toward our neighbor's.
My first thought was "Where had they come from? Were they trying to get into the chicken coop?" I'm not so worried about that. Our chicken coop can certainly withstand the concerted efforts of racoons. Our feed barrels, on the other hand, probably cannot. But I'd rather lose feed than actual animals any day.
On the good side, puppy training is proceeding apace. They've both learned to sit, although actual housebreaking is taking longer than the Pirate would like. It's just a matter of time before they're the terror of the small-animal population!
What surprised me most about the whole racoon thing was that I never heard them. Not while they were in the house, not while they were rolling the dog food bin twenty feet from where I was sleeping. Admittedly I do sleep with earplugs at night, but still. I would have thought that at the very least the dogs would have woken up, and I am normally pretty alert to the puppies who sleep right next to my bed.
Tonight the Pirate and I had stayed up kind of late to watch a James Cagney picture, then I stayed up even later to read. At a little past one something splashed in the creek. The Pirate and I looked at each other, then got up and went out to the deck to look. We could see racoons splashing in the middle of the creek, then almost immediately there was the noise of some kind of fight.
IN THIS CORNER: We have something that has the bark of a small dog, punctuated with high-pitched growls and occasional screams and yelps.
IN THIS CORNER: We have something that continually whistles like a guinea pig in distress.
The battle raged on, moving up the slope on the other side of the creek from us toward where our neighbors keep their horses. I can't believe they didn't hear it too. The Pirate fetched the paintball gun and shot into the trees and for a full two minutes all was quiet. But then it started all over again, the barking and the whistling drifting off downstream toward our neighbor's.
My first thought was "Where had they come from? Were they trying to get into the chicken coop?" I'm not so worried about that. Our chicken coop can certainly withstand the concerted efforts of racoons. Our feed barrels, on the other hand, probably cannot. But I'd rather lose feed than actual animals any day.
On the good side, puppy training is proceeding apace. They've both learned to sit, although actual housebreaking is taking longer than the Pirate would like. It's just a matter of time before they're the terror of the small-animal population!
posted by Aoibheall | 1:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home