We've had our share of raccoon problems this year. Living so close to a forested area, the critters find all my gardens delightful, all my pets terrific buddies, and my garbage cans as amusingly simple puzzles to solve. :-p

Raccoons carry rabies and there have been reports of the hydrophobic critters roaming the nearby towns, so I am on the alert. I've already instructed the kids how to detect a rabid critter, and I went out the very next day to get rabies shots for my cat (I paid $85 for the vet visit, too, because I didn't want to wait two weeks for the $10 rabies clinic). The raccoons just LOVE our yard and like to "hang" with my cat, who, oddly enough, strongly resembles a raccoon with his gray and black striped fur.

Last night we heard a very loud commotion on the back stoop. A young raccoon, obviously STARVING (or perhaps bored from all the fresh fruits and veggies in my gardens, grr), had clambered up a 4-foot-high plastic garbage bin, opened the heavy lid, and was gleefully and noisily dumpster diving in the trash. *sigh* We marched outside in an angry brigade, armed with a broom, a leftover laminate flooring plank and my most important weapon: a camera! Scary, indeed. But the critter scurried off into the dark, eluding my flash!

All I could get were his beady red eyes, can you see him??

I can't really, either. :-p

The durn rascals are everywhere this year. Oddly enough, there are no spring peepers, hardly any crickets, and very few crows in the neighborhood. What's going on with all this ecological imbalance? Instead, we have bastions of raccoons, earwigs and deer. Not a very good trade, if you ask me.