This post is long overdue. As I was going through all the past challenges, I realized that I never posted our study of raccoons.
In our neighborhood, we have raccoons. Big raccoons for the most part. They always surprise me when I see them because they are large, curious looking animals. We have had them look in our windows and french doors at night with their shining eyes. We have had them sit in open doorways and look in at us. They have been known to carry away whole bowls full of cat food. I had a big Tupperware container filled with catfood on the back deck and they would come at night and remove the cat food, carry the pieces over to the water dish, and proceed to wash the food and then eat it. We could see their hand prints on the deck and around the bowl. They are clever creatures indeed.
Last summer Mama Raccoon would bring her young ones in the middle of the night to climb the trees just outside our bedroom window. You could hear them making noises in the dark as they played and climbed. I am not positive but I think they would go up the tree and eat the seeds from the pods from the magnolia tree. They would rustle around in the limbs of the tree and if you shone the flashlight out there, their eyes would reflect like glass.
Here is a notebook page that Mr. B made for his nature journal about raccoons.
If you can’t read the bottom I will type it here for you to read. It makes me smile.
“One of the most adaptive mammals ever, the raccoon can make a living almost anywhere. Eating nearly everything it can put its hands on, raccoons aren’t ones to be starved easily. Some live eating grubs and fruit, but the majority of these sneaky thieves steal pet food, bird seed, and any valuables it could pawn off later for a good price. When caught in the act, they will climb the nearest tree and flaunt their invincibility by falling asleep up there. Guard dogs will do next to nothing because they will fight with ninja-like prowess when cornered.”
Funny.
This time of year our chances of seeing and observing a raccoon are very high. I hope we see one again soon.
We have huge raccoons too. One year, they made their home in our attic through a tiny hole in our roof that they made much larger. Everytime we would put a new piece of plywood on the roof to patch the hole they would actually rip it right off! Stinkers! They are not shy either, they use to walk right by us minding their own business, as if they OWNED the place. lol. Some nerve 🙂
I haven’t lived in an area with active racoons. But here in Japan, there are tanuki, or Japanese racoon dogs. When we had our cub scout camp a few weeks back, we moved all the food into cars overnight because the tanuki will come into camp and try to get into food bins. (There are also reports of monkeys in the woods around the camp area. I don’t know if I could bear that much excitement in the middle of the night.)