💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~stack › gemlog › 2023-01-05.racoons.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 03:25:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
As I get ready for bed, most of me is hoping that the racoons stay away tonight so I can finally sleep, but a decent chunk of me misses their silly, serious faces and hopes that they will try to make their pilgrimage to my roof in order to take a dump.
Racoons, as I found out, like a quiet, out-of-the-way places to defecate safely. Once they find a good place, they will go back there, and the pile will grow. It is not particulary gross but can be a breeding ground for a few parasites and diseases. My roof is, apparently, a perfect place, and the three juvenile racoons make their way up the fire escape to their chosen toilet at night.
Racoons are very serious creatures, with incredibly cute faces. The trio reminds me of video game characters - maybe Mario Brothers (although I haven't played since arcade Donkey Kong...). They are very deliberate, slightly clumsy, and they have hands. Whenever I see them scaling the steep steps of the fire escape, one is standing on the ground holding the stairs, one is on the floor above looking down, and one slowly moves up -- or down, looking at its presumably siblings for advice.
There is definitely a conversation going on - often waking me up as they make their way. A chatter, more like an argument. Trying to spook them makes them silent, at which point they freeze and one of them advances. Usually I try to make loud noises from behind a glass door or clap -- but inevitably it just invites an investigation, and a little racoon face gets close to the glass and peers in at me, to see what kind of creature is interrupting their business.
This is possibly the second generation of raccons in my backyard. My West Coast house is in the middle of what passes for a city on the west coast, and it is not far from vast forested areas. But I suspect they live nearby - perhaps between the two fences separating my backyard from the somewhat annoying neighbors who insisted that they were going to pay for a new fence (theirs was breaking), and after I offered to pay half and we hired a fence-builder suddenly declared that they were not paying a penny. I wound up paying for a fence on my side while the old fence remained, slowly breaking, on theirs. After that, they stopped saying hello to me or my family. Whatever.
And so there is a space between the fences - maybe 50cm or so, and I always suspect that something lives there. The first racoon we met was Buddy - who turned out to be a female -- perhaps the mother or the grandmother of today's racoons... Buddy was easy to identify by the bitten-off tail and a bum leg.
We'd see Buddy scrambling up the fence every now and then. Later, with some smaller racoons. It was a spectacle -- a racoon head pops up at the top of the fence, and looks left, then right. Then the whole racoon suddenly appearspops and runs across the fence. The next head pops up, and an identical copy of the one before, going through an identical traffic check, and an identical run. That kept going longer than imaginable, then, finally, Buddy's larger head did the dance, and after some scramnbling, Buddy would climb up and run off, leaving a trail of the bitten-off tail behind her stiff run.
The racoons destroyed our pond, painstakingly built by my partner. They ate the fish that spontaneously appeared in it (we joked that the racoons put the fish in there), they took bites of expensive water plants, and finally punctured the lining after eating all the frogs.
The new group must be juveniles, because I don't think adult racoons travel in groups. Although city racoons may be different - there is evidence that adult females get together in groups (to gossip, I guess) -- but only the city racoons do that. Their country cousins do not socialize.
I've hosted a racoon toilet years ago, when I rented a house with a play structure. My kids were still plausibly little enough that I thought they might climb into the treehouse, but it never happened because racoons decided to crap there. I even cleaned it out once, which was an effort, but they came back and I gave up. We moved out, and the kids grew up.
Seeing a growing pile of poop on the roof was somewhat of a relief -- racoons never poop where they live. After seeing the racoons climb my fire-escape steps I was terrified that they had moved into my attic -- once that happens, I would be forced to get someone to exterminate them, which is the last thing I want.
Their toilet is actually right next to my third-floor toilet, which for some reason has a door onto the roof right next to the toilet bowl. Not just a door, but a 5-foot door, inviting theories that my house was built by trolls. The entire family speculated about the life of the troll who would sit on the toilet, open the door and wave to the neighbors (with toilet paper in-hand!)...
As much as I love these creatures, they disrupt my sleep. So I am trying to deter them. The interwebs say it should not be hard -- the toilet is not a particularly valuable location and if it's difficult to get to they will go elsewhere.
I tied a plastic kiddie pool (that I was supposed to through out years ago) against the steps, and for a few days they stopped coming. Strong winds blew it away and they came back, waking me up. It was the third day of interrupted sleep, and I shrink-wrapped the pool and a few steps.
Apparently racoons don't like the way plastic feels on their hands, and I am hopeful they will stay away, even though I miss their little faces.
But perhaps I will get enough sleep to get back to coding, something I haven't done this year yet...