Tag Archives: raccoons

October 2, 2022 · 10:01 am

Sunny Sunday 10-2-2022

boredpanda.com

This is such a cute picture. I wish that the raccoons around HERE had a better idea of what “sharing” means, and “respect for property.” Thankfully, we haven’t had any more raccoons eating us out of house and home lately, or tearing up the bird feeders. My husband actually filled the feeder the other day, and the birds came in celebration, flitting around all over the place. If the raccoons would learn to be better neighbors, we could all enjoy the seeds together.

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Today is DAY 79 of my daily yoga practice. I’ve decided that I may NEVER build an actual “HABIT.” I’m definitely on the slow end of the spectrum on how long it takes to actually build one. Maybe I’ll just have to be satisfied that I consciously make time for my practice these days. I noticed the other day that our yellow lab, Amber, definitely does the ‘downward dog’ pose and stretch several times a day. SHE’S in good shape, so I’m glad I’m taking a page from her playbook and doing this one, too. :0)

I’m feeling energetic enough this morning that I’m planning to go out and do more work on my square foot garden boxes today. I’ll take containers of both KILLZALL and EIGHT when I go. I want to use the little rake tool to get as many weeds out as I can and smooth the Mel’s Mix out as much as possible. I’ll spray things to encourage any remaining fire ants to die a cruel death (I’m becoming quite vicious in my hate for these little guys) plus spray to kill remaining weed roots. Then I’m planning to take the wheelbarrow and gather 24 bricks to take out there. I’m going to use those to hold down the weed barrier cloth we’re planning to put down in the boxes. My husband said he’ll help me cut the cloth and get those down. Not sure how much I can get accomplished on this, but it seems the weather is perfect today for my efforts.

I hope your Sunday is a nice one.

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June 14, 2022 · 12:01 pm

Busy Tuesday Already

bromebirdcare.com

We just returned from running errands this morning.

We caught raccoon # 7 overnight in our humane trap. He was a really big one. He was docile, though, so we drove out and relocated him several miles away from us. I think this may be a record-breaking year for raccoons for us. The memo has definitely gone out that the Lewises have good sunflower seeds in the feeders. I just wish the raccoons could learn to share and not trash the feeders. We spend a lot of time repairing the feeders, plus we have to leave them empty until we catch the newest culprit in the humane trap.

We left our trash at the bottom of the driveway for pickup, noting that, even with the washed out parts on one edge of the driveway due to the incredible rains we’ve had (12 inches in one week!) the driveway is still in the best shape it’s been in forever. Jeremy Young did a miraculous job spreading the crusher dust for us so we could get down and up our driveway again. We marvel each time we drive on it.

We got our mail, went for a haircut for my husband, a shot for him, and then back home in record time. We’re going to have lunch in a minute and then rest a bit before tackling our afternoon.

Mother Nature is giving us a break today. It’s merely ‘way too hot’ outside, rather than ‘excessive heat warning’ today. I’m planning to mix up some KILLZALL and see what weeds I can murder this afternoon. We’re down to zucchini and red onions in our garden, plus the two planters of tomatoes now. Both are on automatic watering systems, although that seems almost like a joke right now, with all the rain we’ve had. Our plumber is trying to get her this week to arrange line #2 in the well house so we can have automatic watering in the front planters, too.

I got a new book on Yoga in the mail today. It’s called, Big Yoga – A Simple Guide for Bigger Bodies by Meera Patricia Kerr. It provides a gentle program for a healthier body, greater flexibility, and a peaceful mind. Since I’m both older than dirt and have a larger-than-I-would-like body, I’m going to dive into it and see what I want to add to the half hour of “Gentle Yoga” positions I’m doing that I learned from Cat Kabira in her wonderful DVD.

And that’s my morning. Have a wonderful afternoon!

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January 1, 2022 · 5:31 pm

The Raccoon Has a New Home

The Spruce Pets-GettyImages

After my husband filled our bird feeders on the deck two days in a row, only to find them completely empty and one hanging askew, we knew we had the last raccoon of 2021. My husband set up our humane trap on the deck, placing it so the trapped animals wouldn’t completely demolish our grill cover again, eat a chair, or other related incidence.

The first night nothing happened. This morning the trap was FILLED with raccoon. The biggest we have ever had. My husband estimates he weighed 20 lbs.

When we had a break in the rain, we put the trap in the back of the truck and drove out behind our home. I guess we travel about 5 miles on the winding road. There is a creek that runs under the road that is away from most of the actual houses and yards where we let the raccoons out.

This raccoon just stood inside the cage with my husband holding the end open for him. It was like he was deciding if he wanted freedom or not. He finally turned a bit, realized the end was open, and was gone in a flash. We could watch him land in the water and swim away.

I guess we’re awful neighbors, driving the raccoons out away from our home and ‘dumping’ them where there is a chance they will be a problem to others, but we really want to give them another chance at life.

Since they don’t ‘share’ the seeds, but eat every last one of them, and then sometimes trash the feeders, we think they don’t play well with others. We hope they find other family members, dance for joy at their regained freedom, and stay away…

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June 23, 2020 · 9:32 am

Thoughts on a Tuesday – June 23, 2020

Our forecast is ‘Downpours this morning and scattered thunderstorms this afternoon. Chance of rain 100%”

 

Jimmy Nyakora via Scene and Heard – Match Box Quotes

Other than the downpours and thunderstorms, I’m hoping for a quiet rain. I have no big projects for the day. I wanted to finish weeding my veggie garden, but it looks like that won’t be in the cards today. My husband planned to mow the lawn, but that probably won’t be happening, either. All that will be waiting for us when Mother Nature decides to cooperate.

Our DirecTV system has a nice feature where you can pause a program and it will record it for you until you want to resume watching later. This causes a ‘buffer’ to form, where you can then fast-forward through commercials. We are totally addicted to this feature.

My husband and I have a running ‘discussion’ about why the feature doesn’t always work the way he thinks it should. It will hold about 40 minutes on pause, and then it starts playing. (Hopefully, we have it muted, or else it sounds like the TV is possessed, coming on by itself and talking erupting in the living room while we are in our home office.) Either way, the buffer is filled up and the TV plays. Sometimes the buffer is retained and sometimes not. We cannot see a pattern.

It REALLY irks my husband. He is careful to set it up at night so that we have a full buffer in the morning and he is able to zip through commercials to his heart’s content.  When, for some unknown reason, gremlins have done their work and the buffer is ‘gone,’ he gets frustrated and angry. Our ‘discussions’ haven’t solved the problem. He refuses to call DirecTV to try to get an answer. And so, the ‘discussions’ continue…

We MAY have another raccoon. This would be #6 this season.

Getty Images

The sweet things won’t share, or we wouldn’t have a problem. They eat EVERY seed in EVERY feeder, and many time trash the feeder in their efforts to chow down. My husband will set our humane trap tonight and we’ll see if we capture another member of this year’s family to relocate with the others.

Foundation Pest Control

I mentioned that it MIGHT be the squirrel family we have this year. Yesterday I saw THREE squirrels at once being quite active and athletic on the feeders. That’s the first time I have seen three at one time. One was sitting in the shovel bird feeder, eating the seeds we leave there every day. A second was at the main bird feeder, hanging from his back legs as he avidly ate as much as possible using both hands to grab seeds. A third was in the gallon-sized clear bottle that sits on another feeder in our window. He was all the way inside the bottle, filling his cheeks.

Mourning Doves-Shutterstock.com

We usually have a pair of doves who sit on one of the electrical lines that cross the back of our yard. I haven’t seen them lately. I hope they are okay.

I hope that you are having a really nice day.

 

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October 3, 2019 · 10:26 am

Thoughts on a Thursday – 10-3-2019

Jeff Jett

Seeing this cute photo of a raccoon reminds me how HAPPY I am that we finally seem to have encouraged all the raccoons to go elsewhere. At least for a while.

We love seeing animals around our place. We see deer, possums, racoons, squirrels, road runners, birds of all kinds….   We have lots of feeders on our deck because we love watching all kinds of birds flit around while we sit at our dining area table. This comes to a halt suddenly, several times in the spring, summer, and fall, when we find ALL the feeders empty, hanging at half mast, or down on the deck, ruined. Our raccoons seem to arrive in families. We use a humane trap to catch them, one at a time, and then drive them out further into the country about 5 miles or so, and let them out at a creek to hopefully catch up to the ones we’ve relocated before and go on to live a happy life – away from us.

If they would SHARE or wouldn’t trash our feeders and make a mess, we could live in harmony. SADLY, they want it ALL.

Right now we still have hummingbird feeders up and filled since we are still seeing up to 4 at a time, darting between the two feeders and our wave petunias. We’ll keep them up to feed late stragglers who haven’t gotten the memo yet that it’s probably time to head south. (Mother Nature is still giving us summer here, so it’s no wonder the sweet hummers are confused.)

We also have black oil sunflower seeds and small seeds so everyone can find something to their liking. We had kept the feeders empty, trying to discourage the raccoons, for a LONG time, so it’s good to be back to normal now.

I just finished the first of 2 sessions on my elliptical trainer in the garage. I overdid a couple of days ago, and ended up like a slug in my chair most of the day yesterday. Dividing up my time into two sessions will hopefully allow me to keep moving without my body going on strike. I do another session later today plus a session of yoga.

My creative juices are starting to rummage around in my brain, so I’m hoping to get up to my art room this afternoon and start plotting, planning, and playing. (I hope you get a kick out of alliteration :0) )

*Today is Day 31 of daily yoga. Day 16 of getting-serious-about-keto-macros, and Day 5 of three-times-a-week elliptical trainer time. I’m going to give myself a gold star EACH time I do an elliptical session, hopefully making it so I don’t slough off the second session of the day, so I can earn THREE today. I cooked “Cheesy Bacon-Wrapped Chicken” by Suzanne Ryan, Simply Keto last night. Both my husband and son said, “YUMMY!”

The weather people are saying a cold front is coming through over night. I’m holding them to their word that this will happen, and will finally break the back of the too-hot temps with too-high humidity that have become the norm here. Fall – here we come!

I hope YOU have a star-filled and raccoon-less day, too!

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August 16, 2019 · 9:34 am

So Cute – But Not Here

Via Jeff Jett – LinkedIn

 

Via Jeff Jett – LinkedIn

I’m definitely of two minds about raccoons. On the one hand, I melt into a puddle when I see pictures like this. Awwww.

The other half of me has to deal with the problems they cause us when a whole family decides that our deck is a wonderful place to eat us out of house and home. Not only do they eat every single seed of any type in our feeders, they trash the feeders!  If we had raccoons who understood the concept of sharing, or eating without leaving the feeders needing to be replaced, we would welcome them.

We saw one of our long time friends at the store recently. He had a possum on his shoulder! It was really cute, and super affectionate. He had had the possum since he/she was a baby. He also told us he had a raccoon and a squirrel who both traveled with him and his wife, and were trained to walk on leashes! He also mentioned he had 7 deer…. Such a rich, full life!

We have a humane trap that we use on a regular basis after we have clear evidence of more raccoons. We bait it with apples or crackers and peanut butter. We have to be careful where we put the trap because they do everything they can to get out of the trap – of course – and have trashed our barbecue grill cover, plants in pots, etc.

When we catch one, we put the cage into the back of our truck and drive about 5 miles away, relocating the raccoon into a nice creek that flows under the road. Hopefully, this gives him/her another chance at a happy life, reunion with other relocated raccoons – far enough away that they don’t find their way back to us….

 

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