Category Archives: Critters

They’re back again tonight after a few days away. I’m probably at least partially responsible for their absence. There was a night last week when they were REALLY raucous up on the roof and I ended up going out into the back yard twice with a big flashlight to try to figure out what the hell was going on.

Mama Raccoon generally doesn’t like that, so it was quiet the next night or three. Then I heard them back for brief periods for a couple night, and tonight they’ve been back most of the evening.

One thing I did find out on that night last week is that there’s a whole gang of kits out there. A quick Google search shows that “two to five” is normal for a litter – they hit the jackpot since I saw five at once and could hear others.

The first time I had gone out Mama immediately let them off across the roof to retreat, and I saw three kits with her then. They were back in about fifteen minutes, at which point the sound level got even worse and I thought they were coming through the roof. When I went out the second time, there was no sign of Mama – but as soon as I flashed the light, five little faces scurried over to the edge of the roof to laugh, point, and ask if I had food.

They are too cute to live. They’re probably only a month or two old, about half the size of your normal adult house cat, and apparently without any fear or common sense. (That’s how this sort of thing happens.) My money says that Mama told them to sit tight and “Be-HAVE!” We know how well that works with humans, raccoons don’t seem to be any better at it.

Time to be thinking about how I can get a better video or picture taking setup on the roof…

I haven’t been hearing the raccoons up on the roof at night in a couple of months, but there was one last night. He/she must have been the scout.

Tonight it sounds like a freakin’ herd of them up there and they’re playing football, or tap dancing, or sumo wrestling, or something.

The wildlife CAM is still up there – probably time to check and see if the batteries are still holding out. (It’s been months – the batteries will NOT have held out. That’s a sucker bet.)

Meanwhile, a better use for the camera (once I put new batteries in it) might be to watch some of the possibly broken screens that lead to the crawl space under the house. While we regularly (once a month or so, maybe twice) smell the neighborhood skunk in the worst possible way, it’s always a situation where you smell it at both ends of the house, inside, outside, all around the town! However, we’ll occasionally get a whiff, not bad, not strong, and only by the garage and/or connected laundry room.

It does make me wonder if they’ve found a way to make a pest of themselves even more so than average.

Time to go hunting. With a camera, just to be clear!

We’ve all seen parks where someone with a sandwich is subject to immediate attacks by flocks of pigeons, geese, ducks, crows, starlings, and just about every other kind of avian critter nearby. And that’s not to mention the squirrels and the raccoons.

However, all of those creatures have been taught over time to overcome their fear of humans. They’ve been conditioned to respond to the presence of humans and food in a completely different manner than would be natural for them.

Yesterday while eating pizza for dinner, I went outside and sat on the steps in the back yard. There were a couple of birds hopping around on the grass, pecking at seeds or bugs or whatever it is that blackbirds eat from our lawn. As I got to the crust on my piece of pizza, for reasons that I still can’t explain, I tore off a pea-sized piece and tossed it toward the birds.

It was a pathetic throw. I badly misjudged the wind loading on that tiny ball of bread and was only able to get it about three feet from me, barely out of kicking range. The birds were probably twenty feet away.

Prior to the toss my fleeting assumption would have been that the birds would fly away, startled, if I were able to get the bread near them. As I made a pure-de-suck throw, my assumption was that they wouldn’t even know it existed since it wasn’t anywhere near them. And if somehow they did notice the offering, there was no way on earth they would ever come that close to me.

I was wrong!

Immediately the two birds came hopping across the lawn, onto the concrete patio just a couple of feet from me. They pecked at the bit of crust and split it, then flew off into the bushes where I know they have their nest.

I had pizza crust remaining – it was time to test what was happening. I made a handful of additional crust ball bird treats and tossed them out onto the concrete. Over the next couple of minutes, the birds came back for all of them one by one. Even the ones that were just inches from my feet. Then they were back to ask for more. When I wasn’t quick enough to toss out more, they were at my feet, squawking at me in protest.

Cool. I fed the birds.

But where did they learn that behavior? I’ve never, EVER fed them before. I don’t see anyone else in the neighborhood ever feeding them. I don’t know of any bird feeders or other feeding methods in any neighbor yards.

Given all of that, how do we explain this behavior?

I’ve got nothing!