racoons make the funniest noises!

[feistylady]

Last night as my hubby and I were watching TV, all of a sudden we heard a racket in our back yard. When we muted the TV, and got our flash light and pointed it out back, there were probably 5 or 6 raccoons wrestling in the creeping manzanita. It is amazing that when you shine the flash lights on them their eyes glow. Except for the fact that 6 years ago, a female got into our attic and had babies, it is amazing, and exciting that we have the opportunity to get to see wild life right out of our back doors. The deer are so common place, it doesn't seem that exciting to me anymore!

[Matthew]

It is still exciting to me. I guess that is because I live on the south and we do not get as many deer.

[DBCooper]

Feisty,

If the little devils are in the yard just keep your garage and doors shut at all times. They can cause alot of havoc in a garage...... I had a group take up residence for a couple of days in my garage last year.... I felt like a cage cleaner for elephants at the zoo.....!

[feistylady]

Yep, I have a funny story about the female that got on our roof, took off the screen and got in our attic. She had babies right over our head in the bedroom. You could hear her walking around every night. We called animal control and they referred us to some guy in Sutter Creek who came to our house and loaned us a trap. We tried that for several nights with no luck, and called him to come out again. This time he brought raccoon male urine, and put some on several cotton balls and threw then into our attic. I also borrowed a device that is used to get rid of moles in the ground, and it makes this loud noise every 3 seconds or so. We put that up in our attic also. She finally left with her babies except for one. That one cried for several days before the guy from Sutter Creek came back. Of course while he was listening, the baby was quite, so he left this thing that is used to catch dogs, and so that night when this baby was crying, my husband got up in the attic, saw it moving around, and snagged it, and pulled it out. It was really cute, but I can tell you, while it keep up up for 3 weeks, I wanted to kill all of them!! We ending up giving it to an raccoon rescue guy in Folsom who said he gets lots of babies from Rancho.

Originally Posted by Matthew

It is still exciting to me. I guess that is because I live on the south and we do not get as many deer.

Wanna swap?

[feistylady]

Icini, the reason you don't get as many deer in your neighborhood is because of all of the wood fences you all have. The deer used to be on the south before the houses were there. I only saw deer every 6 months or so when I moved here in 1986, and thought it was cool. After the south was built, most of the deer came over to the north because there are still houses like mine that don't have a rod iron fence. Our back yard in fact is a path way for the deer although this summer we used a high powered hose nozzle on them to hopefully train them to go around our yard, not through it. They do sleep under our 5 coastal redwoods at night so many times in the morning, I have a bunch of them staring at me when I come out side! I keep telling them that this motel doesn't have a free breakfast, but they don't listen!!

[Mama Mia]

Originally Posted by Matthew

It is still exciting to me. I guess that is because I live on the south and we do not get as many deer.

I love the deer in my backyard, of course I have UGLY common ground and they can't do any damage out there...I call them my "kids"...I tell my husband, " the kids are out back tonight" and he knows just what I mean....they have totally demolished my agapanthas but I figure, they gotta eat too..

[feistylady]

we have one agapantha left out of 5, and this year we put chicken wire around it, and we actually got some flowers, at long last!! Yes, they do have to eat, just not at my house!!

[DBCooper]

They do a good job cleaning up the fruit from my backyard. We tossed the damaged plums, apples, and pears over the fence and each day "Buck" would come clean it up. It cut down on the jumping and the flies as well.

[Bossman]

All I can say folks is that the wild life was here before we moved in.
As a matter of fact we invaded their domain, they didn't invade ours.