Oh, yeah. They’re here.
I happened to go into the kitchen and heard noise out in the garden. I went out into the tree fort and heard lots of rustling around, sounding like it was along the back fence. I went back inside and got a flashlight to shine down in the yard.
The first one I saw running along the bottom of the reed screen I put up along the back fence. It was so fast, it could have been a cat. I kept hearing noise, so I kept looking. That’s when I saw something on the reed screen. With the flashlight, it was clearly a small raccoon.
Now I know why my screen keeps falling down. It’s a raccoon ride.
By this time a light was on from our tenants downstairs, and I saw a flash of light from a camera. Grabbed my camera, keys, flashlight and went outside to the backyard. One of our tenants was in the backyard with a camera, and I joined in, using the flashlight to spot them – in the trees, along the phone lines, behind the fence – and take pictures. I only have the flash in my camera, which isn’t very powerful. The shot above is the only one in which I got all three of them. [2006.07.31-16:28 EDT: Replaced with photo adjused for brightness.]
They’re clearly young, they seem well-fed, and they were having a lot of fun with each other. They didn’t seem interested in my compost bins at all. They did seem to like rustling around in the leaves. I know there’s lots of earthworms in there, and probably other good eats. Gnawing on phone junction boxes also seems to be a pastime, not one of which I approve.
They were back the following night. There were three, again, but one of them seemed larger than the other two and stayed on the ground. The three photographed above were all about the same size, and all up and down the threes, along, behind, and on the fence and screen, and so on. That time my partner got to see them, which was great fun.
It’s been too hot since then to keep a raccoon vigil.
