⚡ March 29, 2016
Standing Conk 🍄
While writing this blog post devoted to nature, I looked up from the computer to see a pretty big raccoon enjoying a handful of nuts I put out for the much smaller squirrel who used to come and eat them. But a whole winter has passed and either the semi-trained squirrel has forgotten or worse, he’s gone forever. The raccoon is taking quite a long time to eat a rather sparse collection of nuts that have been sitting on the porch for a while now. They’ve been rained on a couple of times … so they must be pretty tasteless.
But this is the first time I’ve ever seen a raccoon this close. He does have rings on his big tail, and he’s finally lumbered away. His spidey senses must not be that great because I’m literally only a few feet away, behind a glass door that isn’t actually shut all the way, due to encroaching rot on the frame.
Encroaching rot was going to be the topic today, but the raccoon is back and I’m getting a little concerned, since I’m beginning to realize that the problem might be bigger than I thought.
An Update, Written From the Future.
Friday, May 13, 2016. 4:41 pm
It’s now nearly two months later and the raccoon seems to be gone. I never saw it again after I took the photos, but Bill came across a dead one about a week later. Were they one and the same? We don’t know, so far. Was it actually rabid and that’s why it didn’t run away even after I tapped on the glass two feet from him?
Did our kindly neighbor with a ready gun actually shoot it, as he offered to do? What an interesting life it is in the country. I never appreciated it until now. It took living on a boat to teach us how to live on land. Good solid firm and gently sloping land.
The dead racoon is gone. Vultures have been circling, doing their nasty but necessary business. And the beat goes on. 🐔