Raccoons Again

These photographs are from a series of experiments with light and shutter speed. They were taken at night with flashlights held by my husband. No tripod was used because I didn't think I had time to set it up. Ironically, this coon stayed so long I could have set it up and still gotten a thousand photos. The raccoons have not returned for me to continue the lighting experiment.

I posted one of these photos at my Project 365 site and was both gratified with the generous comments and dismayed with the general consensus that raccoons are "cute." You may remember the night the raccoons here slaughtered four chickens and the nightmare we had clearing them out of the woods. There is also the threat of rabies, which is a very real threat here. There was a raccoon rabies outbreak within the past five years. On top of all of this, there are the cats. But the cats are in at night which is when raccoons come out.

Nearly two weeks ago, I was polyurethaning a new cabinet that John had built in the new living room. I was concentrating. I remember John walking through and saying something about raccoons. Later, I heard him tell me from the other room that there was a raccoon lying under the bird tree. I was curious and wanted a photograph of a raccoon in the daylight. I mentioned that it was rare for them to be out in the day and wondered out loud why it was there. I got the camera and went to the window. Sure enough, the raccoon was lying down. But it was not eating bird seed. It looked sort of dead. John joined me at the window then and I told him it looked like a dead raccoon. He said, yeah, it did look like that. I asked why it was behaving like that. He said because he had shot it four times. I screeched, almost dropped the camera, and left the room.

Apparently while I was working on the cabinet, John had told me there was a raccoon behaving badly outside. He had loaded his rifle in the same room that I was working in and gone upstairs for a clean shot. The raccoon had been stumbling and could not keep its balance. It probably had distemper and John humanely shot its troubles away.

All the raccoons that we have seen since then have been healthy, as the one in these photographs is. But we are keeping a wary eye open for them.

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April 1: A Reminder about Feeders

Black bear near our well in 2009.

It is April 1. Today is the day we are supposed to take our bird feeders down so the bears don't come and eat the feeders. They are, or will be, waking up. We know where the bears on the mountain hibernate in the winter. We know they come down to the house to see how careless we were about leaving food about (or kitties about). Click here and here for the story. We see their tracks and scat all summer long in our apple orchard, the woods and under the choke cherry trees. So bring in your feeders today.

Raccoons are a huge problem in spring, too.

But bears aren't the only problem. The raccoons destroy more of my feeders than bears do. And we have had recorded outbreaks of raccoon rabies in Orleans County in the past five years. Minks and fisher cats will be by, also (as happened to me last week when a big mink ran right by me under the feeders when I was photographing birds). So get your feeders in today!

I will be taking the feeders in as soon as they are empty. Probably tomorrow or Sunday. I put out the last of the sunflower and thistle today because of this snowstorm we are having. The redpolls were crazy happy that I filled the little thistle socks  and the chickadees were irritated at my slowness, as always. The woodpeckers are back because the others are back and the robins, doves. blue jays and red-winged blackbirds stop by to take a look now and then. It's been another great photography season with the birds and squirrels. The photos are not all posted yet, though, so you will see more!

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Some Random Shots of Summer

One of our day lilies

I am fascinated by the stigma

A geometer moth

Another, different, brown geometer moth

Bumblebee on red clover

Five-toed raccoon track and tiny, round Zorro the Cat
tracks in the mud after a flash flood.

Dwarf zinnia that Ironman successfully planted

They bloomed continuously until the first heavy frost in September.

A Carolina grasshopper

Yellow woolly bear caterpillar

An unidentified warbler

Question Mark Butterfly

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A Raccoon Warning

Some of the many tracks on my windshield.

I got up early on July 7 to let the cats out while it was still cool. That's when I saw the raccoon tracks on my car's hood, windshield and roof. After the raccoons massacred chickens in late May, we had been, and still are, very watchful for signs of any more raccoons coming too close to the barn and house. It was very creepy seeing that a raccoon had climbed to the top of my car in the middle of the night. Was this a ploy to show dominance? To show that they could still sneak up on us? Since we had killed three of its comrades in May, this very well could be a show of strength. 

It isn't paranoia that makes me think the raccoons have these motivations for stomping on my car. In reality, animals and humans have spent centuries performing dominance displays. There was no food on the top of my car for the raccoon to take. It seems clear to me that the act was a demonstration by the raccoon. It gives me a whole lot of respect for the critters. And it has taught me to be very careful when I go outside in the dark. It wasn't too long ago that there was raccoon rabies in the Northeast Kingdom.

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Another Fisher Cat Story

On the Saturday night of the women's retreat, Amy and Nate went out for the evening. The chickens always put themselves to bed, but the days are longer, and they hadn't retired to the coop before the kids left for the evening. Now this has happened before, and the kids have always gotten back fairly early. But this night was different.

At 10 PM, I went out to the garage to count cats to make sure they were all in for the night. The garage was closed but I heard loud chicken clucking. The chicken wasn't in the barn — which is very bad. I ran to the stairs and called out to John, who had gone to bed earlier. Then I grabbed a flashlight, a very poor flashlight, and ran outside. I knew that it would be a couple of minutes before John would be able to get the rifle and get outside to get the raccoons and I wanted to stop any more massacres.

The panicky, clucking chicken was in the driveway in front of the garage door, under the outside light which was on. She was pacing back and forth as if waiting for the garage doors to open so she could get into the house. I ran up to the barn. My plan was to shine the flashlight into the barn and holler, which would hopefully slow down or stop the raccoons.

I shined the inadequate light into the open barn from where I stood outside and an unholy scream broke out. I began to scream. At the same moment, John came out the garage door with the rifle. I stumbled towards the house as John came towards me. He hollered at me for screaming and scaring the animal in the barn. I got back to the garage and waited with the chicken.

She was still clucking wildly and pacing in front of the garage doors. Occasionally she would stop her clucking, cock her head and listen to a scream that we heard on the mountainside. As soon as the scream would end, she would throw herself into the air and try to get into the garage through the sealed garage door windows. She left the imprint of her wings and feathers on the dusty glass of the windows.

John returned and said it was not a raccoon that had been in the barn — it was a fisher cat. He said I had been very foolish to go to the barn unarmed when I knew that was trouble in there. There could have been a bear or bobcat in that barn. Or a raccoon. But this time it was a fisher and I had put myself in danger with what I had thoughtlessly done. John was furious with me. I realized that he was right and apologized.

The screaming on the mountain from the angry fisher cat continued for awhile and faded away. But the chicken was not calming down or going to her roost. We opened the garage door and the noise scared the chicken into the barn, where we managed to herd her into the coop. All this time, the cats, who could have gone outside through the garage, and the dogs, who always bark at excitement outside and could have jumped through the screens on the window, were completely quiet and stayed in. They recognized the cry of a fisher cat and were not going to antagonize it further.

It was midnight before the chickens were in bed for the night and John and I could return inside. The kids got home around 1 AM, when I told them the whole story. Thankfully, the repairs to the chicken coop that Nate had made had held and everyone was safe.

Since that time two weeks ago, John has seen the fisher cat prowling the land at night. The raccoons tried to get into the coop one more time. I heard wild clucking again one night. By the time everyone got out to the coop, there were no threats to the chickens in the barn. But there was a lot of blood on the chicken wire over the window. The raccoons had tried to chew through the wire and gotten badly cut.

We are in the process of dismantling the falling down barn and building a big, secure coop.

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A Disastrous Week

A raccoon track on the raccoon trail

I went into the apple orchard last week and found this raccoon track on a deer path. We have had severe raccoon problems lately. A group of adult raccoons were breaking into the barn and eating chicken eggs. Then they started to eat the chickens. We lost many birds. It was a dreadful week. You never knew when you went to the barn in the morning whether the raccoons breached the repairs made to the coop the day before. John was able to shoot three raccoons — all were just huge. Nate finished the repairs on the coop successfully so that we have gone ten days now without losing anymore chickens. But the raccoons are still getting into the barn. They just can't get into the chicken coop.

I had assumed that the raccoons were living in the relay shed that Comcast has on my property. They own a right of way here. The shed is up behind the house and works in conjunction with the cell tower on the ridge of Barton Mountain. While some of the raccoons may live in that shed (a tree blew down on the roof and broke the shed open), the tracks here show that some raccoons are also coming in from the east and live beyond the apple orchard.

Besides the threat to the chickens, raccoons here pose another threat — rabies. There has been a raccoon rabies outbreak the past few years here in Orleans County and we are always advised to stay clear of them and to keep our dogs under control so that they are not hurt. Quebec air drops rabies vaccine every summer in the forests of northern Vermont to keep rabies out of their province.

Clearly, from behaviors we observed during the height of our raccoon problem, raccoons communicate to each other. Let's hope that they have told each other to find food somewhere else.

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Treed Raccoons

I check the bird tree every morning at dawn and this morning saw what looked like a squirrel nest that had not been there yesterday. Being three-quarters asleep, it took me a few seconds to realize that it was two raccoons way up at the top of the little tree. I have posted these photos in reverse chronological order.

I took photos outside in my jammies, upstairs after knocking the screen out of the window, and from a chair with the window open downstairs. The sun was just coming up, and not being conscious, I used poor settings.

My activity disturbed one raccoon which left. But as she left, she crawled all over the other, making sweet, soft plaintive sounds as if saying "come, come" to the other. It was very sad. The other stayed so still that I became convinced it had died. But it had not.

The cats did not like the raccoons in the tree before dawn. But by 7 AM, Buddy was climbing the tree for a better look. Later that morning, a red squirrel went right up on an adjoining branch and scolded the one raccoon that remained.

The game warden and rabies hotline said to call back if it were still there after a day. But by midmorning it had climbed down and gone home.

This afternoon, it occurred to me that the raccoons may have been scared by a coyote last night as they ate. They may have been too scared to come down all night long. Amy's dogs don't bother them. They often eat under the bird tree at night as the dogs bark at them. But a coyote running around loose would definitely be a threat.

On the other hand, one of these photos suggests a different scenario. Do raccoons do it in the trees?

Technorati Tags: raccoons, Procyon lotor
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Raccoon

This beauty showed up Saturday afternoon for more apples and peanut butter sandwiches. That night, four raccoons visited me.  This photo will open, full-sized, in a new window when clicked.

Technorati Tags: raccoon, Procyon lotor 

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Signs of Spring: The Raccoon

I have never seen a raccoon here on my land or woods. I have been told that if you have skunks, you won't have raccoons. I don't know if that is true or not, but we saw this raccoon in the bird tree last night. She has been raiding the bird feeders this week by ripping them off the tree and tossing the lids away. We thought ravens (who have also been hanging around) doing that. Amy took these photos while I shone a flashlight on the raccoon. (The flashlight died after five minutes. We're so prepared for a power outage.) The poor raccoon was too skinny. The deep snow is making food gathering difficult.

Technorati Tags: raccoon, Procyon lotor
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