Raccoons, Snakes, and Adventures in the Garden

Every year I (mostly successfully) grow some tomatoes and a few other things in our garden. The garden consists of some raised beds at the edge of our yard along the road. Our yard is mostly trees, so only the edges near the road get enough sun.

One bed is a permanent bee, hummingbird, butterfly garden. This year I also have two beds of tomatoes with a few hot banana pepper plants, and a bed of zucchini. I used to plant snow peas but the grasshoppers cured me of that. One year they ate the pea plants down to nothing in about two hours. There were so many grasshoppers on each plant that they flattened them down to the ground while they munched away.



I took these photos a while back so everything is lots bigger now.




You can't even see the zucchini bed now.




Last night some raccoons raided the tomato beds and generally made a mess while ruining several large tomatoes. These are likely the culprits. Mom raccoon brought them up in the middle of the day to munch on the cat food.



Scrappy isn't nearly as afraid of them as he should be.



I got some repellent spray and treated the wood on the beds with it. Hopefully that will work.

Stefan and I found this fellow in the yard and relocated him to the woods before Scrappy found him. He's a ringneck snake and was about ten inches long. He's in a yellow trash can which was the handiest thing to capture him in.



Our turtle is back. I can tell he's the same one that's been around in previous years because of the scar on his shell. Here's he's escaping with some cat food in his mouth.



Here's Scrappy and the turtle in 2006. Note the turtle had cat food in his mouth that time, too.



I've also had two very large snakes in the gold fish pond. I knew something was up because the fish weren't their usual happy, come-feed-me, selves. And then some of them disappeared.


The first snake was a 4.5 foot cottonmouth water moccasin. Unlike many water moccasins he wasn't territorial and wasn't aggressive toward me. He cleverly hid in a fold in the pond liner. My plan was to chase him around the pond so he would leave on his own. Mr. Snake foiled this plan by swimming into my net when I poked at him. I wasn't really expecting to catch him and wasn't prepared. The snake couldn't figure out how to get out of the net. I couldn't figure out how to get hold of anything to kill him with without him escaping.

I yelled for Stefan to bring a hoe. Obviously Stefan's practical education has been lacking because he couldn't figure out which tool was a hoe. Finally he brought me a four tined hard rake. I supposed if you could manage to hit a snake with one of the tines you could kill it, but hitting it would be a problem.

I carried the snake up the road to the big pond and let him go. Probably there are three dozen more just like him there. A few days later another big one got in the pond. Hubby was home this time and he shot it. I couldn't tell if it was a water moccasin or one of the look-alikes, but it was a shorter snake.

Click on any of the photos to go to my flickr page to see the photos in more detail.

The "Mongrel" Horde

Well, not really. They sounded like a pack of dogs, though.

We've started feeding the outdoor cats before dark so they get to eat before the raccoons come out. This works pretty well, except for one raccoon who sometimes shows up before dark to eat with the cats. Drat. One of the cats was late coming up for dinner tonight, so right after dark I stepped out to put out more dry food for her. As soon as I stepped back in the house and shut the door I heard a commotion. Momma Raccoon and six babies had swarmed onto the porch and were growling and snarling over the food. Pushing and shoving occurred as well. Raccoons obviously have no table manners. Most of the time they didn't even look up when I shot pictures, but I did get some of their faces.

The night really does have eyes. Mom is in the upper left and all six babies are shown. One is mostly hidden on the right.

Say cheese!

This is the runt and the shyest of the babies. Mom is on the right. She is very thin. At some angles I could see her ribs. Nursing all these babies is taking a toll.

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Mom was a little scary. I was holding the camera at arms reach and she kept darting up to it. I think she thought it was food.

Creatures of the night

For a while we had several 'possums that helped our outdoor cats eat their food. I haven't seen them in a while and I think this boy (girl?) probably chased them off. He doesn't look too big here but he is four or five inches taller than the cats. He walks up, walks around so he is in front of the cats and hisses at them. Proving that they have some smarts, the cats run off. A raccoon could probably leave the cats in little pieces if he wanted to. Callie did bop him in the forehead once before she ran off. After that I started putting a separate bowl for the raccoon away from the cat's food because I was afraid he'd hurt them. He's not afraid of me or the camera. One time I opened the front door, stuck the camera almost in his face, and took several flash pictures. He posed for me.



About a week ago I opened the front door. Several things happened all at once.

1. The two cats jumped off the quarter pipe (skateboarding ramp) at the end of the front walk and ran toward me.


2. This boy was walking up the front walk and stopped about halfway up to look at me.


3. I became aware that some round growly monster thing about the size of a bowling ball was right in front of me eating a bowl of cat food and growling loudly. At first glance it seemed hair was stuck out everywhere, making is resemble a demented porcupine.

Unknown growling things freak me out. Remember, it's dark, it's the country, there is only moonlight. I screamed. The growly thing turned to look at me and I realized it was just a young raccoon and that it had been growling over its shoulder at the big raccoon. Small raccoon took off, knocking the cat food and the cat water over. Both cats and both raccoons converged on the same spot in the walkway and diverged, having totally ignored each other.

A couple of nights later my husband saw two little raccoons and the big one in the yard so I guess we are feeding three raccoons now. Or maybe the small raccoon brought his sister to see the screaming woman. I'd like to feed the outdoor cats in the house, but Callie is too feral, and both she and Buddie are extremely aggressive toward my other cats.

Speaking of Buddie, here he is. He showed up a couple of years ago and had apparently been abused. For a long time if we picked up something in the yard he ran off and hid. He was really shy. He's pretty mellow now, except when he's plotting to beat the stuffing out of one of my other cats.

Sunday I noticed that Buddy's paw was extremely swollen. I gave him antibiotics and looked for an abscess. He went to the vet today and had the abscess drained. The vet said he'd been bitten by a snake probably five days ago. Yikes! The swelling was from infection, not poison. He didn't limp or anything until Sunday. He's back home tonight and the swelling is much reduced.