Raccoon scales our balcony to eat cat food
Monday, June 18, 2007
Well, our exciting kitten adoption on Sunday afternoon continued with some additional excitement around 2 AM on Monday morning. I heard some noises coming from the second-floor balcony and I got up to investigate.
When I flipped on the outside balcony light, there was a big fat raccoon eating cat food with her cute little opposable thumbs (I know she’s female because of what happened later). We had left cat food out on the balcony because the kittens were playing out there earlier. It never occurred to me that the leftover food would be enough to entice a raccoon to scale the balcony. And once she was sitting there eating I was afraid she was going to be belligerent and refuse to leave . . . but once she noticed me, she noisily scampered back over the wooden balcony and scaled the vinyl siding (yes, vinyl siding) down to the grass. It was actually quite impressive, the little thief. She made little piggy, snorting noises as she went.
The inset image is to extend upon the LOLanimals photos I wrote about yesterday. I created a LOLraccoon just for this occasion, by captioning a stolen Google Image Search photo.
The noises last night’s raccoon made reminded me of the time two raccoons somehow got trapped inside my gated apartment complex in Salem, Oregon, in 2004. They were running back and forth along the fence, frantically snorting and loudly squealing like little pigs as they searched for a way out.
What a weird couple of days it has been. I wish I had snapped a photo of the raccoon, but the whole thing happened too quickly. It was a really strange surprise. And a very plump raccoon.
Now, as I was typing this post just before 9 PM tonight, the raccoon returned to our second-floor balcony. This time we got an even better look (because it wasn’t fully dark yet) and determined that she is a pregnant (and probably also nursing) mother raccoon. Thus the large body size. And of course, being suckers for babies and mother animals, we felt bad for her too, as she must be fairly desperate to scale balconies for cat food while awkwardly great-with-child.
But we are not fond of the idea of one of the kittens being injured to serve an acrobatic raccoon’s nutritive urges. Thus there was yelling and banging to startle it back down the treated lumber balcony and vinyl siding. And I forgot to get a photo again because I was so adamant about scaring it down into the grass. Oh well. I’m hoping we don’t receive another return visit.
Though, admittedly, raccoons are cute as hell. But I know there are at least 20 good reasons not to have a pet raccoon.