Wildlife Adventure

 

Before I tell you about our wildlife adventure, I need to tell you about where we live.  We are in a neighborhood.  Not in a neighborhood like in North Carolina where everyone has at least a 1 acre lot.  No—in a neighborhood where no one has even 1/5 of an acre, and where some people have less.  Behind us there are houses on slightly bigger lots, and then it looks like a house on a big piece of property.  (Meaning a house that was built a long time ago before the urban growth restrictions.)  On the other side of our neighborhood there’s a big natural area that is heavily wooded, and on the other side of that there’s a wetland—but we’re pretty far away from those.

Last night the girls had gone up to bed and all of a sudden Rachel came running downstairs yelling

Raccoon!  There’s a raccoon in the back yard!!

We quickly turned out the family room light and hurried to the french doors to look out, and sure enough, there was a raccoon scurrying towards the back fence and then underneath it.  We didn’t think anything more of it.

 

Late last night when Russ & I were ready to go to bed (after dealing with stress by watching mindless television for far too long) we got Tiger and put her outside.  Tiger seems to be slowing down in her old age, and now spends many of her daytime hours sleeping somewhere in the house.  (We all say we want to be cats when we grow up!)

She still sleeps outside, though, but we haven’t gotten the garage unpacked enough that she can sleep in the garage.  So her bed has been out on the deck, and a few feet away from that is an old kitty litter container that holds her food.

When I put Tiger outside I went to put a scoop of food in her dish, but I couldn’t find the bin in the dark.  I had Russ turn on the porch light but the bin wasn’t there.  I was so puzzled.  Russ put on his shoes and turned on more lights and came out to look with me.  No bin anywhere.  He suggested that maybe the raccoon had carried the food bin off, but I was sure it hadn’t.  First of all because the bin was a lot bigger than a raccoon, but also because it would have had to carry the bin over the fence—there wasn’t room to get it under the fence.

We decided that one of the kids must have moved the food.

 

This morning we asked each of them, but no one knew what had happened to the food.  When Rachel got home from band she went out into the back yard to look, and a few minutes later came running in triumphantly.  “I found it,” she said, “the raccoon was trying to take it under the fence!”

Sure enough, it was in the back corner of the yard, right where the raccoon had disappeared under the fence.

The raccoon must have been very frustrated that it wouldn’t fit underneath.

It looks like it’s been pushed and rolled in the mud quite a bit!

So all’s well that ends well, especially when we don’t have to keep feeding Tiger tuna because we can’t find her food.  But I’m really thinking we need a plan B for the food.