We were getting ready to head down town for my Father’s Day ice-cream cone tonight, when the girls saw some rustling in our Strawberry patch. There were 4 baby raccoons that had made their way into the patch. My wife took the hose and sprayed them out of the patch. One of them went under the fence into our neighbor’s yard, the other three went up our hill and into one of our Maple trees.
We had actually seen two of these guys yesterday. I was on hose duty that time. When I first went out, I thought it may be a rabbit (they are plentiful in my neighborhood). As I approached, I saw it had a brown back (perhaps the cat from two doors down). Then I saw the tail. I backed up fairly quickly. ‘Coons can be pretty nasty if you suprise them. But when they looked up, I realized that they were just young’ns. My inablility to frighten them verbally should have been my first clue.
Back to tonights encounter…
They just sat there staring at us. As we walked farther away, they started down the tree. As we approached (with… say… a camera) they went back up the tree.
I am sure I got some decent shots of them, but have only a film camera, so the posting of those shots will have to wait.
It was one of those great things that gets me talking to my neighbors. We all had our own stories about these 4 babies. The neighbors to the south had their entire strawberry crop wiped out (in suburbia, that is about 3 yards by 3 yards).
A couple other neighbors indicated that they were going to call animal control and get some traps out here. That is probably best. As cute as these guys were, they all grow up to be trouble .
Now…Here is where the seasoned blogger is able to take that story and spin it into some great insight on life, and how we are all like raccoons in a strawberry patch.
But tonight… I got nothin’