Raccoon Mayhem chapter 1, 2008

There hasn’t been much Raccoon activity this year. Perhaps because spring has taken so friggen long to get here. Perhaps because I haven’t planted much yet so there isn’t a lot to dig up. Maybe because the tomatoes are in their own private little greenhouses and they don’t realize they are under there. Most likely they were just lulling me into a false sense of security that last years “re=homing” did the trick.

I returned home from California to raccoon prints around the pool so I knew they were back, on the great annual spring migration to uproot my garden. But the first bit of mayhem happened in the last 24 hours.

Yesterday at this time I was vacuuming out the pool. We are expecting beautiful weather this weekend and it is usually about memorial day that I start swimming but I checked the temp yesterday just to have something to compare it to. It was about 64 degrees. I tossed the thermometer back into the pool after I looked at it. Today it is gone, replaced only by more raccoon prints on the pool deck. I never did find the trowel they stole last year. I walked through the yard and garden and do not see it anywhere. I even went out front to see if he took it over the fence and then abandoned it.

So now I am rethinking a PlayStation II disc I pulled out of the pool this week, at first I thought a neighbor kid through it over the fence (they do that sort of thing) or a crow dropped it as it is very shiny on one side. Now I’m guessing the prints I found when I got back from vacation perhaps they had wondered through with the game on their way to add it to the every growing collection of stuff and it dropped into the pool and they couldn’t retrieve it. Who knows, maybe they just like Nascar games.