Category Archives: Critters

September 26, 2016 · 22:46

Please Accept My Apologies

On behalf of the sane citizens of the United States (a group that is apparently small and growing smaller by the day) I apologize for our electoral process.

Please accept my apologies. And these cute pet pictures. (Two of these are not like the others.)

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Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, Photography, Politics

August 28, 2016 · 23:19

An Empty Nest?

No, not us. We already know that we’re empty nesters.

No, I’m talking about Rocky and Raquel, the raccoons that live in our neighborhood, often on our roof under the eaves from the garage.

You’ll recall that Raquel has been cruising about (pictures here, here, and here) for the last couple of months with at least three kits. But ever since we got back from our New York City vacation about two weeks ago, I haven’t heard any of them gallivanting around on the roof.

Tonight when I went to take the trash out, I spooked something large on the roof right outside the door. It was well after dark so I could only see an outline for a second when it was silhouetted against the sky, but there wasn’t much doubt that it was a large raccoon. Later, I’ve heard some movement on the roof, both over by their garage hidey-hole and by where they drink the water that condensates and runs off from the air conditioner.

But I’ve only heard one animal, not three or four.

I’m speculating wildly, but I think it’s probably Raquel and that the kits are grown enough to all be off on their own.

The question is where “off on their own” is. Given that we’ve had this cycle going on for years here, you would think that almost every house would have their own raccoon tenant. But while we do see a lot more than I ever expected to see in the LA suburbs, it’s not exactly a crowd of trash bandits.

I suspect the other half of the circle of life is at work here. We have some big hawks that could easily pick off a cat or a small, young raccoon. We have dogs in almost every back yard and while most of them are just, well, dogs, one of them has got to get lucky and catch a critter every now and then. We have our share of coyotes who roam the area from time to time and they could take down a full-sized raccoon, although it might be a pretty equal battle.

But I think that the biggest “predator” is probably the automobile. One will occasionally spot a raccoon carcass out there among the other suburban road kill. I don’t know what the average life span of a suburban raccoon is, but I’ll bet it would be a lot longer if they learned to stay out of the streets.

Time to put the TrailCam back out there.

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Filed under Critters, Los Angeles

August 18, 2016 · 23:08

A Certain Lack Of Trust

Out for my late evening stroll (two and a half miles) I was about two blocks from home tonight when I spotted one of my old nemeses. It was digging for grubs in a yard two houses down from me, a good sized critter, black, bushy tail held high, with that bright white stripe prominently displayed.

I was going to simply cross the street to give it a wide berth, but the skunk started toward the street instead and I froze. I’ve read that they have lousy vision, which was fine by me. It waddled across the street and started digging for grubs in that yard.

Down the street was walking a man with two dogs on leashes. He had moved out into the street and over to my side. I was watching the skunk to make sure it didn’t do anything rash, as well as to see if there might be a mate or baby skunks wandering about. As my neighbor got next to me he asked, “Was that what I think it was?”

“If you think it was a skunk, then, yes, it was,” I said.

He reined in the leashes on his dogs, which were now picking up the scent (the skunk had not sprayed, but still…) and getting excited. He moved on past me and I started toward home again.

As I got to the corner to turn for home, another man rounded the corner with two large dogs. I stopped him and gave him the heads up that a potential major problem lie just down at the next corner.

He was incredulous. “A skunk? Here? In the city?”

He must be new to the area, because we can smell them once or twice a month, even though seeing them is more rare. I assured him that I was dead serious, noting that running into a skunk while walking the dogs would most certainly ruin his day.

“Yeah, right,” was all I got for my efforts. He moved off down the sidewalk.

I crossed the street and headed for home. As I got halfway down the block I heard dogs start to bark and could clearly hear a man’s voice yelling, “OH, SHIT!”By the time I got home the first whiffs of Eau d’Skunk were wafting across the neighborhood.

In the stereotypical big city suburban neighborhood where the assumption is that no one knows their neighbors’ names even after living next to them for twenty years, I tried to be friendly and outgoing. You know – “neighborly.” Our now-stinky friend should have had a bit more trust.

Karma, man! It’s a real bitch.

(P.S. – For the record, we do know most of our neighbors’ names for at least the first two or three houses, with one notable exception. Further down the block, if we don’t know the name of the neighbor, we at least know the name of their dog.)

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Dogs, Health

August 7, 2016 · 22:40

Trailcam – August 7th

What have the kits been up to?

You will remember that we have critter “neighbors”, a family of raccoons in particular. A few weeks ago I got a “trailcam” to try to get some better pictures of them. After the initial photos, I left the camera to run for a couple of weeks (i.e., I got too busy to climb up onto the roof and retrieve it) which didn’t work quite as well as I thought it might.

I did get some reasonably nice pictures over the next couple of nights.

The family, mom and her three kits, were active almost every night, usually where this drain pipe from the air conditioning unit emptied out. Their very own watering hole.

So I moved the tripod over to where it was nearer that spot. One doesn’t need much of a close examination to determine that one’s mom, a mammal…

…and nursing her kits.

After not seeing or hearing them on the roof for nearly a week, they were back. Let’s do a tail count here. We have visitors, since I count five tails.

There was the usual roughhousing (“Kits will be kits!”).

Mom and the family look good.

And then something happened. This was the last picture with this view.

Then there was this. Obviously, someone had knocked over the tripod.

Then they sat on it. There are a LOT of pictures that look just like this, nearly every night. The IR flash going off and either being totally overexposed because there was something directly on the camera, or showing blurry, close-up fur like this.

When the camera wasn’t being sat upon by critters, it was looking at the trees above. Those would be the trees above that sway in the slightest breeze. In front of a motion activated camera. With night vision capabilities.

Not that it needs the night vision. The trailcam is perfectly capable of taking pictures at any sign of motion during the day as well.

You see what I’m getting at here?

Following the great tip over of July 24th, over the next 11 days I have 24,755 pictures pretty much all like the two above. That averages out to one every thirty-eight seconds. FOR ELEVEN DAYS.

I know they’re there every couple of days because the tripod’s tipped over near their watering hole and across their normal route of access.

One one occasion only, they were late getting home. Given their nocturnal nature and the fact that mom would have been herding and protecting her kits, I’m very surprised to see them passing by after sunrise.

I’ll see what shakes out and if they’re still hanging around in a week or two. Maybe next time I’ll lash the tripod to some of the HVAC ducting or pipes up there.

I hate it when the critters are demonstrably smarter and more clever than I am.

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Filed under Critters, Photography

July 18, 2016 · 23:05

Reek (Attempt The Second)

Okay, THAT was weird! What I meant to say is:

…and not the “good” kind, like on Game of Thrones!

As I said on Facebook an hour ago:

A skunk in our back yard has expressed a powerful opinion about tonight’s RNC dumpster fire – repeatedly! Little striped dude, I’m sympathetic, I agree, but I can’t breathe! Please cool your jets!

It’s only gotten worse since then, as in giving-me-a-headache-making-me-want-to-puke-this-is-where-they-came-up-with-the-idea-of-tear-gas worse.

Bleah!!

I have no clue how all of that HTML from my Facebook feed got in there.

Is the moon full tonight? Close…

Maybe I should check the HTML of this post before I hit the blue button – and there’s all of that crap still in there, but not showing at all on the screen! Let’s hope that deleting it in the text/HTML version makes it go away.

Preview the post – still messed up. Try again. Preview again. Maybe it’s okay now?

First I can’t upload the stuff I want to, now something’s uploading crap that I do NOT want to and doing it invisibly.

Odd.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Computers, Critters, Politics

July 18, 2016 · 22:53

Reek

…and not the “good” kind, like on Game of Thrones!

A skunk in our back yard has expressed a powerful opinion about tonight’s RNC dumpster fire – repeatedly! Little striped dude, I’m sympathetic, I agree, but I can’t breathe! Please cool your jets!

It’s only gotten worse since then, as in giving-me-a-headache-making-me-want-to-puke-this-is-where-they-came-up-with-the-idea-of-tear-gas worse.

Bleah!!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Politics

July 17, 2016 · 21:29

Trailcam – July 17th

No, I’m not going to fill my website with critter pictures every day. But it was one of those days and thinking tonight is contraindicated.

A $100 plumbing problem turned into an $800 plumbing problem and then looked like it was going to be a $6,000 plumbing problem but instead turned into a $14,000 plumbing problem, which we’re going to have to do because the alternative is almost certainly a $50,000 plumbing problem.

I just LOVE owning a house!

A 21:00 arrival – fashionably late.

Mom leads the way out of the tree.

I have no idea what she’s looking at up there. Howling at the moon? That’s about where it would be at that time.

About a two to three hour cycle with them coming and going.

This camera does have video capability which I’ll have to try out. I wonder if they go get food and bring it back here to eat it, or what the behavior is that drives this cycle.

Follow Mama!

Mama’s a good sized critter, bigger than a cat (except for possibly a Maine Coon), about the size of a mid-sized dog, probably 15 pounds or so.

03:12 is an earlier night to go to ground than last night. I wonder if anything’s up.

I don’t recall any sign or prediction of fog – it’s pretty much dry as a bone here. (Epic five-year drought, blah blah blah.) Instead I suspect this is a glare from Mama being just a few inches in front of the camera, either in passing or performing an investigation.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography

July 16, 2016 · 22:38

Trailcam – July 16th

This is going to be fun! I love my new toy!

For reference, the flat roof here is the one over my computer room / office. My desk is right about directly under where the camera is. The hidey hole where the raccoons often live is where that little gap is at the left edge of where the flat roof and the garage roof intersect. Just beyond the garage, to the left, is that honkin’ big date palm that you see in about 99% of the pictures taken from the front yard.

Coming back here after wherever they spent the night before. Less than an hour after sunset and you can see that the twilight sky is still much lighter than it is in later pictures.

It’s been obvious for a while that the hidey hole under the eaves of our garage is not their only “nest.” It obviously is their daytime home quite often – you can hear them moving around off and on all day long.

Mom sees the camera, attached to the ladder at the edge of the roof. “W! T! F!”

It’s still there. Let’s see if it will attack.

Now it’s clear that the family is indeed a female with three smaller kits.

I did wonder what they kept doing with this pipe. From inside, I can often hear them banging it, moving it, sliding it around a bit. It’s not fastened down, I just figured they were tripping over it or just stepping on it.

Wrong!

The pipe is a drain for the condensation coming from the heat pump just out of sight on the right. This little guy’s holding on to it and they’re quite often seen over there by the end.

Which all of a sudden makes perfect sense. Yet another reason they think we’re the Raccoon Ritz. The pipe gives them a safe and convenient source of drinking water!

This picture also explained something. At times we just get a tremendous ruckus coming from up there, clearly heard from several rooms away. It sounds like a burglar is breaking in. I’ve thought it might be a half dozen or more adults fighting, having an orgy, or both.

Nope, it’s the kits wrestling around and playing, like immature mammals around the planet have been doing for the past several hundred thousand years. When they hit the two skylights (just out of sight in the far right corner) and scamper back and forth across them, it’s like them frolicking on a drum.

They seem to come and go, back about every two hours or so. Feeding I presume, looking for someone with an open trash can or a fruit tree that makes easy pickings.

Sunrise was at 05:50 – this was the last time I saw them as they headed into the hidey hole for the day.

I find it interesting that they come out less than an hour after sunset but go to ground for the day almost two hours before sunrise. My guess is that it’s easy to know when the sun has gone down and it’s dark enough for them to feel comfortable, while their sense of when sunrise is coming might not be as accurate.

But I could be completely full of it. (Full disclosure – the odds are excellent that I am.)

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography

July 14, 2016 · 21:38

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Thursday, July 14th

‘Cause I haven’t done one of these since last October, that’s why.

I used to do these about every six to eight weeks at the most. Now it’s been nine months. What the hell have I been doing for the last nine months? Hmmmm… I should know this one…
Back at the end of June I posted a Photoshopped picture and said there was someone in the original who was mentioned in a Tom Lehrer song, and I invited anyone to guess who it might be:
My fannish/filkish friend Harold Groot got it correct over on Facebook.
Most days I try hard to be friendly, helpful, and cheerful. After a couple of long, miserable nights (leg cramps, again) my goal today was to be minimally offensive. I think it was a roaring success. Neither I nor anyone around me ended up in jail or the hospital!
It’s Wernher von Braun
With the raccoons going nuts every night on the flat roof above me in my computer room/office, I finally went and bought a better tool to take pictures of them. I got a Bushnell wildlife trail cam. It has an infrared flash and is triggered by motion, so you set it out and when something wanders into its field of view, it snaps a picture. I didn’t do anything fancy to mount it up there, just put it on a short tripod, then lashed the camera and tripod to the legs of a ladder propped up against the roof. It makes it easy for me to get up there and check it, and hard (I hope) for the curious raccoons to destroy it or tip it over. We’ll see.
The Long-Suffering Wife is doing well on her trike. She reports that the hardest part is getting it unlocked and locked back up again. I’ll admit, we might have overdone it on the bike lock. About four feet of coiled, braided steel about 3/4 inch thick. It doesn’t much want to get uncoiled and it’s like wrestling a pissed off octopus to get it around the tree and then through the bike frame and unlatched.
Speaking of the raccoons, when I posted pictures of them last week, the aforementioned Harold Groot did some research and told me over on Facebook that it was almost certainly a mother and three kits, not a male/female pair and two kits. He didn’t mention whether or not that made my imaginary dialogue less funny, more funny, or had no effect on the funny to begin with because you can’t improve or lessen that which did not exist to begin with.
Best Pokemon Go line of the day was a comment on a local television station’s story about how a gym or beacon or some sort of special place was in front of the house of a registered sex offender. Think of how this endangered the children! To which someone pointed out that there were no children playing the game – it was all twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings.
As I have been here working and writing this, I can hear the raccoons directly above me, right where the camera is. They keep coming back, and now I can hear them chirping and chittering (if you’ve never heard them, you should listen to the clip), even over the sound of the air conditioning and the music. (Toccata & Fugue in D Minor by good ol’ JS Bach, at the moment.)
Should you happen to need a bicycle shop in the west San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, we can highly recommend Spoke ‘N Wheel at Platt and Van Owen. When we bought The Long-Suffering Wife’s trike they were having a bad morning (a break-in overnight) but took great care of us anyway. Most impressive was when they politely pointed out, after The Long-Suffering Wife had picked out a particularly rakish and stylish helmet, that it was a $250 helmet and given the expected speeds and hazards involved on the trike, maybe a $45 helmet might work just fine. That’s some good customer service right there!

Remember, “The only secret to magic is that I’m willing to work harder on it than you think it’s worth.” From Penn Jillette, a freakishly brilliant human.

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Category Archives: Critters

Please Accept My Apologies

An Empty Nest?

A Certain Lack Of Trust

Trailcam – August 7th

Reek (Attempt The Second)

Reek

Trailcam – July 17th

Trailcam – July 16th

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Thursday, July 14th

No Context For You – July 8th

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