Under the deck inhabitants!

Living in the country (okay, in a subdivision out of town at least) we tend to have a lot of animals around our place. The place they tend to take up residence is under our back deck. We have had a number of animals under there, including raccoons, possums, rabbits, and (wild) cats. The possums, rabbits, and raccoons we leave alone for the most part, and the cats we "dispose of." ;-)

Well, we once again have raccoons under the deck, but this time thigns are a bit different. A few years ago we had a mother and babies under there, and we were able to get her to move by going out and stomping on the deck, and banging on the windows when we saw her out. Within a day or two we saw her one evening at dusk, carrying her young off one by one.

All this week we have had a mother on the deck every night around 7 pm, which is a bit early as they like to be out in the dark mostly. She is VERY tame, and does not seem to fear us at all. She was out last night so I snapped some pics:



Here she is getting off the picnic table, after looking for food and not finding any. The window is only a few of feet from the table, and she did not seem bothered by us at all!

I snapped this as she worked her way around to the steps on one side of the deck. It's a little blurry due to the lack of flash and the fact it was hand held, but you can see she is seems to be nursing her young:



She looks like a young mother, maybe the first year for a litter.

Of course our killer Lahsa Apso was on the case! Seriously, although they are small dogs, they have some balls (figuratively in this case as his were removed) and are pretty good guard dogs. Of course, a raccoon protecting it's young would tear him apart I'm sure. This video shows she was not too worried about him!:

http://media.putfile.com/Racoon-67

Hope the link works!

So, the babies are usually weaned by mid-July, so if she is still around by then, we will start the process of driving her out with more noise and maybe some moth balls tossed under the deck.

The good thing about this is that they aren't skunks, eh?

Sorry John! :-)