This morning before it was light I was on my front porch and noticed little hand like prints on my stairs,of which there are 15 then a concrete landing and 4 more to reach street level. Apparently the raccoons were back and had made a night of it playing tag or perhaps running relays up and down my stairs,as it got light I also saw my freshly washed steps were now a muddy mess. I knew the prints to be those of raccoons which until a couple of years back we were nearly overun with because of people feeding them they over bred,the result being domestic pets were'nt safe from them and as in cases where a species over breeds nature eventually caught up to the problem and wiped out most all of them with an epidemic of distemper. Before that you couldn't keep track of all the raccoons you would see in the course of a day. I have nothing against raccoons but as with any wild animals they have to be left to their own devices when it comes to foraging or they become a problem. I woke up one night to my cats carrying on and a weird thumping sound and got up to investigate and a raccoon was busily ripping a hole in my screen door to get in and have the cats food,obviously it had to have been fed cat food at some point to recognize the smell as something for it to eat. Did I mention they have NO fear?
Muddy porch steps can be a mood changer.
ReplyDeleteMy mom used to feed raccoons years ago. She kept a huge bag of cat
food and waited for them each night. I don't know how the new owners
of that house felt about inheriting that tribe of critters.