Island Life: Oh This Serene Rural Paradise

It was a strange sound, an animal sound. Perhaps even an animal-in-distress sound? It wasn’t a bird, we thought, probably, though it was a little screechy-chittery like a bird.

I heard it when I got up in the morning, through our bedroom window and through the open bathroom skylight, though there was nothing to see out either of those windows.

I went downstairs. I looked out the front window.

And that’s when I saw the mother raccoon, screeching and chittering as she desperately circled and scratched at and poked at the Hav-A-Heart trap we’d baited with a raw salmon tail.

We’ve had the occasional raccoon come by the whole time we’ve lived here. I had to turn on a hose to chase this character away three years ago:

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But recently, they’ve stepped up their game.

It started with the fountain and the birdbaths in the back yard. We would fill them every day, only to find them empty in the morning, often with their decorative rocks scattered about the path. “Raccoons,” we’d say, and put everything to rights again.

Then something started sleeping in our plants. In the pots, I mean, crushing the flowers, smashing the stems. Making everything look terrible. Mark added some strategic garden spikes to a few of the pots. Maybe that helped a bit.

Or maybe they just got interested in the chair cushions instead. First we would just find them on the lawn, next to our chairs; then they’d be a good deal away from the chairs, covered in duckweed and mud.

We have cushions that you can tie to their chairs, so we got those out, and tied them.

Guess what? Raccoons are smart and they have opposable thumbs. Now our tie-cushions are also muddy and covered in duckweed.

The little bandits were clearly spending more and more time in and around the pond, which is worrisome, because the Children of the Koi live there. (We lost the koi themselves in the otterpocalypse; we shall not speak of that. But we do enjoy their Children, and want them not to be eaten by raccoons.)

So, at last, Mark set out the Hav-A-Heart trap. “I will take the beastie to the other side of the island and let it go there! It can trash someone else’s yard!”

The first night, we caught nothing. The stinky old fish tail just sat at the back of the trap, attracting yellow jackets.

But the second night…

“Oh lord,” Mark said, when he saw what had transpired.

And then my brave and fearless husband put on a thick leather jacket and my thick leather gardening gloves (the ones I wear to pull up nettles and thistles and blackberry vines), grabbed a crowbar, and went outside.

This was terrifying–and it’s why I used a stock photo to illustrate this post, not a photo of my own! No way was I going out there with my phone. I watched through the window as he approached the angry, desperate mother raccoon, frantic to secure the release of her kit.

He walked across the lawn, brandishing the crowbar. Miraculously, the mother raccoon darted away. Wasting no time, Mark lifted the trap with the crowbar and carried it into the center of the lawn; then, still using the crowbar, he opened the trap. It didn’t take long for the kit to figure it out. It darted away after its mother.

No way were we going to separate a mother and kit.

We bring the chair cushions in when we’re not using them. We refill the fountains and the birdbaths, and half the plants in pots are failing anyway, victims of mites and rodents and the myriad other monsters that inhabit our yard.

Well, at least we still have frogs. Adorable, helpful, harmless frogs.

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Ah, the peace and serenity of rural life.