Dinner Guests

Oh the joy of living near the Cottonwood Trail and natural wooded environment! For the second time, we have experienced visitors in the wee hours of the night, scavenging for dinner in our trash can. The first raccoon, who I like to call "Gordo", frequented our trash several years ago. He stuck around for several months and outsmarted our attempts to secure the trash can. Gordo was so large that he easily outweighed our dogs, and his belly dragged the ground when traveling. Once, we saw Gordo crossing our street, heading back into the woods. Remsen sped up the lighting fast Corolla and almost hit the fat, slow raccoon. Another time we caught Gordo in the act and he waddled across the yard and climbed up a nearby pine tree (rather impressive!). Gordo disappeared after a while. Our best guess: he died of a heart attack after stuffing himself on our unhealthy junk food.

That brings us to the present. Recently, we saw a visitor on our back deck, stealing veggies from Becca's garden. Last night, a nice night of sleep was interrupted by Sadie's loud howling at something in the yard. An inside dog with keen hearing, she had caught not one but TWO raccoons in the trash can. Remsen went out to investigate and found one of the coons had nestled into the trash and was having a nice little slumber. The other he caught on camera (the coon really did strike a pose!). The aftermath, of course, is not pleasant, and we are really tired of cleaning up after our dinner guests!