Since our weather is supposed to be sunny and in the 60s this afternoon, I’m planning to spend a lot of time outdoors today. I’ll check on my new spring garden, plus mix and spray as many two-gallon containers of weed killer as I can handle today. (Good exercise, too!)
Mary Braatz_National Wildlife Federation
We caught a raccoon in our humane trap overnight (finally!) so we’ll go out in a bit, get our mail, relocate the raccoon, and hit the store for incidentals on the way home. Hopefully, we can fill up the bird feeders again, unless he’s part of a huge family of raccoons…
Thanks to Susy, we can all enjoy Matt Dixon’s January image.
And, enjoying the beginning of January 2022 from a different standpoint –
I thank the Australia Firefighters for creating this calendar and making it affordable, reminding me that “I ain’t dead yet.”
On this, the 1st day of January, 2022, we caught a BIG raccoon in the humane trap we set on our deck, trying to catch whoever was eating all of our birdseed the last week or so. Last night we caught him, and will give him another chance at life later today, ‘relocating’ him about 5 miles from us, in a creek beside the road. Hopefully, he will enjoy the rest of his life, forgetting where we are.
Our weather is awful. The day started at 61 degrees with pretty heavy rain. It is still raining, and the temperatures are falling as a cold front barrels in. The low is supposed to be 19 tomorrow morning. We have rain now, the possibility of severe storms this afternoon and evening, and the chance of snow flurries tonight into tomorrow. Happy New Year….
I’m going to get a beef stew in the crock pot tomorrow to ‘comfort’ us about the change in the weather.
Help for my friend, Kay, seems to be on the way. They are now working to expedite the okay on insurance coverage and she should get some definitive surgical help in the coming days. Fingers crossed.
You HAVE to laugh when you have to “update” the first blog post of the day 5 times to get rid of as many mistakes as possible. My lesson learned for the day is that you CANNOT cut and paste from the Etsy website to the blog without a MESS. Sorry about that. I think it’s straightened out now.
The Etsy shop is NOT messed up, and I AM offering a 25% discount on any two pair of my hand-painted wooden earrings – dangle/wire, post/stud, and/or clip-ons plus free shipping. If you’re interested, please take a look and take advantage of this and other discounts. HandmadeHavenByLinda on Etsy.
TheSprucePets-GettyImages
We’ve been setting a humane trap each night on our deck, trying to catch the critter who has been emptying our bird feeders lately. No luck until this morning, when we caught a cute raccoon. He didn’t hiss or spit at us, even though he was in the cage. We went out in the rain, put our trash at the bottom of the driveway, got our mail, and then drove out about 5 miles to relocate the raccoon in a stream. Raccoons don’t share well. They not only clean out all the feeders – they TRASH the feeders. He probably has brothers or sisters, mother and father, cousins, etc., but it’s ‘one down’ now.
The Mercury News
It’s raining, of course. I drowned putting out the trash. My husband had put the cage with the raccoon in it in the back of the truck, plus the bags of trash around the cage. I couldn’t get the bags out without moving the cage, scaring the poor raccoon as I drowned. Of course, he had pulled part of one of the trash bags into the cage with him, and I had to extricate that, as well. I was not a happy camper when I got back into the truck. My HUSBAND got drowned when let the raccoon out, so we’re even. :0)
Since it is supposed to rain off and on all day, it’s a great day to now stay home and stay inside. I plan to do a few things on the ‘should’ list, read, and maybe play in my art room today.
Last night we set the humane trap again, having been cleaned completely out of sunflower seeds for several days in a row that are SUPPOSED to be shared by birds, squirrels, AND an occasional raccoon. This morning a BIG one, maybe the daddy of the pack, was in the trap, calmly waiting for us.
As we always try to do – unless the raccoon is hissing and spitting and trying to bite us – we fed our animals and then put the trap in the back of the truck. We travel about 5 miles away from the house and let them go in a small creek that runs under the road. I like to think they all meet again to enjoy the rest of their lives together.
This morning the trip to relocate the raccoon was a bit more eventful than usual.
On the way out to the little creek we saw three deer beside the road. They were on my husband’s side of the car, but I think they were close enough he could have reached out and touched one of them as we slowly went by.
Alice McDowell
Further down the twisty, turn-y road there was a bull in the middle of it!
Pixabay
We slowed and watched him as he gradually moved a bit to one side. We went VERY slowly around him. He didn’t move a muscle. I don’t know about my husband, but “I” was holding my breath.
Further down was one cow, munching grass right beside the road.
Motion Array
Finally, another raccoon raced across the road in front of our truck.
Shutterstock
We let our raccoon out. He went right out of the trap and down into the creek. (It MAY be that he’s been through this before?)
We came home, hosed off the porch, and will re-bait the trap tonight to see if there are more.
creativeartworksblog 