Saturday, August 23, 2008

Bandits in the Night

At 4:00 a.m. I awoke with a cramp in my leg and got up to walk it out. As I passed through the kitchen I heard chittering noises through the open window, letting me know that our nightly visitors were out on the porch. I grabbed the camera and cracked open the door to catch them in their act of burglarizing! (Pardon the bad pictures--it was dark and I was still half-asleep!)
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Years ago this racoon family discovered we kept bins of cat and dog food on our porch, and we soon became their nightly fast food fix.
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We fought it for a long time, purchasing more secure bins and allowing the dog to chase them up the trees. However, when the racoons could no longer open the bins, they found they could knock the lids off and spill the contents by pushing the bins over, leaving us a nice mess to clean up the next day. As for the dog, they just had to wait to do their marauding when we were all safely in bed.
Eventually we accepted that feeding this family of four as well as our own pets was going to be a part of our rural life.
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I think the parents escaped when they heard me open the door, and these two are their current youngsters. While I snapped pictures, Diego slipped past my legs to bark at the intruders (here they are watching him curiously from their perch on the gas grill). After he growled menacingly at them for a few minutes, he returned to the house, his job done. I feel safer already!
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I just love the challenges of country living!

3 comments:

Grandma Honey said...

I wish I were a country girl but I'm just not. I think you can be so much closer to nature, obviously, and to life as it comes. I have too many fears of creatures in the night however. Although, I have to admit, your little bandits are adorable.

ashley b said...

Aunt Mary! I saw your blog on Lori's and thought I would check it out! I didn't even know you were on here! That is pretty funny about your Raccoon family! I'm glad we don't have little critters coming to our house, the poor things wouldn't have a chance with our dogs and Matt! Well I'll have to keep visiting your blog to keep up with you guys! Love you!

Jamison, Monica, Trenton, and Maylee Butler said...

Well hello there! I did not know you had a blog, how exciting. It will be great to see what neat things are going on!