Mama Coon

We’ve had some very hot, sweltering days in the last couple of weeks. Sweltering hot, for me, is 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, I’m actually too hot when the temperature hits 80.

We’ve had some very dry days. I started watering the vegetable and herb gardens. Two of our oscillating sprinklers weren’t working. We have a small non-oscillating round sprinkler that shoots up a spray and since it doesn’t cover much ground, I had to keep moving it, which was exhausting. I spent hours moving the sprinkler every half hour or so. EJ finally bought a new sprinkler because there is no sense planting seeds if we can’t water them. We thought we’d try a sprinkler that fit on a t-post and rotated, but EJ can’t get it to work correctly. We will have to fiddle with the settings.

We’ve had cold days. We had frost warnings for Friday night–that was June 3!–so we went out in the early evening to cover all our plants in our gardens. EJ covered the vegetables in the back yard while I covered the herbs in the front yard. I used boxes, overturned planters (empty), and plastic bags. EJ used cardboard, milk jugs with the bottoms cut out, and I’m not sure what else. It was a lot of work to get everything covered. Saturday morning we uncovered all the plants.

We FINALLY had a rainy day yesterday. It was a steady all-day rain with no lightning or thunder, which we very much needed. A lot of the seeds EJ had planted weren’t sprouting so he thought that maybe they were too old or something. He went out and planted other seeds, and then we got the rain and everything is sprouting! I think it was too dry for the seeds to germinate before.

Last week when the raccoon visited the bird feeder in the early evening. I noticed that she was a little thinner and her teats show that she has obviously been nursing young! She has been showing up most evenings now. The bird feeder probably provides her with a quick supply of food. It will be fun to see her babies when she brings them to the feeder later in the summer.

I don’t mind Mama Raccoon eating the birds’ leftovers, but she also drains the nectar from the hummingbird feeders. It could get expensive making homemade nectar every day so I had to figure out a solution. I finally put the shepherd’s hook pole that holds the feeder in an old kitty litter bucket (we use the buckets for EVERYTHING) which I filled with dirt and rocks to make it heavy enough not to tip over. Then I positioned it on the deck, too far from the feeder for Mama to reach. Or so I thought. She didn’t access it the first night, but the second night I saw her stretch out to grab the hummingbird feeder while she was on the post and drink from it. So the next day I moved the hummingbird feeder further away so there is no possibility of her reaching it from the post. I saw her look up at it, but so far she hasn’t figured out a way to get it.

Mama Raccoon stopped by early Sunday evening. I was videoing her when suddenly Theo appeared. He is sweet, but not the sharpest pencil in the box. It’s not smart to mess with a raccoon–especially a Mama Raccoon. I shouted to EJ and we ran out to put Theo in the garage. Mama ran away as soon as we ran out. I noticed that Millie had been running toward the raccoon as well. I expect Theo to be a bit of a dunderhead, but I expected more from Millie. I shut the cats safely in the garage every evening but now I’m getting them in the garage before the Raccoon visits.

Here is the short video I took of Mama Raccoon. You can get a brief glimpse of Theo at the end. That is when I shut off my camera to rescue him.