Archive for: raccoon

Autumn finally arrives

Well the weather has finally caught up with the calendar. Last week the temps were in the high twenties with humidex in the thirties, and this week we have plummeted to the low to mid teens. The normal for this time of year is 15C by day and 5C overnight according to the weatherman. Yesterday we got to about 9C in the day and last nights temps went below freezing for the first time. We had our first frost of the year last night.

This has also meant that we have switched from air conditioning to heating, so getting the guy out next week to service the furnace etc just to make sure it is all ok for the winter.

Our single deer has been back most nights since our sighting last week. She wanders over around 9pm and stays for about half an hour, or until the food runs out and then wanders off again. She has the most beautiful big ears that are like radars, whizzing round at the slightest noise. The night before last she had a standoff with Ronnie the raccoon.

The deer had been feeding for some time and she suddenly stopped and kept staring into the woods with her ears going mad and her tail twitching, a sure sign of anxiety. After a few minutes out trotted Ronnie who casually walked over to the tree and started eating the food on the floor. The deer stood back for a few minutes watching, then seemed to decide it was her food and walked over and started eating too. Ronnie scuttled up the tree and they were eye to eye with each other. After a few minutes of head nods from the deer and punches from Ronnie the deer wandered off leaving Ronnie to this food. Chris then went out and chased off Ronnie. We did not want to do this whilst the deer was here as we didn’t want to scare her.

On another exiting note, I have finally used my new iron and board and I am please to say both work. The iron is great and made me realise how bad the other one really was!

Groundhog in the garden

We can now add another animal to our list of garden critters, a woodchuck or groundhog as they are also known. We saw one last year in a neighbour’s garden just fleetingly, but today we have seen him twice helping himself to the birdseed which drops on the floor round one of our trees. We managed to get a quick photo of him before he darted off. We also have some baby rabbits/hares in the garden, which are really cute.

We had to have our truck serviced on Friday and the bill was extortionate – $45. Honesty I don’t think a garage in the UK would even look at a car for that sort of money let alone service it. I know it was one of the smaller services (30,000km) but still.

It is really hot here at the moment and has been for several weeks. We had a few cooler days (low 20’sC) last week but mainly it has been in the high 20’s. Today we got 34C which is really too hot and the weather man suggested with the humidex it felt like the low 40’s which I can well believe. The heat is even wearing the squirrels out and they can be found flaked out in the trees and on the seed boxes, they are so funny.

We have been successfully keeping the growing number of raccoons at bay. So far we have noted two different mothers with five babies each and another with three. They are totally adorable, but they keep coming out in the day and they literally take over the feeding stations in the garden, which means the squirrels, and chipmunks are frightened off. Hubby has devised a plan that involves using the hosepipe to flush them out of the garden. For some reason they are quite happy to sit out in the rain and eat, but don’t like to be hosed. We don’t care if they come around at night and finish off the leftover food, but to steal it from our “regulars” during the day is just not on.