In the spring the east side of the front porch was over run with raccoons. Eight adults and fifteen babies. Somewhere, after four or five months, usually the boys all move out of the house and go with dad and the girls move out and go with mom. Then they learn to be dads and moms. It started a couple weeks ago. Instead of going through almost one Kit & Kaboodle bag a night, sometimes I can go two or three nights now. There are still roving bands of three to five showing up off and on all hours of the night to eat out of the bowls but one night there were nine of them, the next night just two. They each had a bowl to themselves and nobody else showed up. When they're done they usually climb up in the rafters to sleep but on this night they were both so bloated they just fell over and slept next to the empty bowls on the front porch.
Each night when the latest roving band shows up, usually with one adult, there is one young raccoon that comes out from under the porch but when the roving bands depart and he tries to go with them, he/she is not welcome. Now it's just living under the porch full time. Orphaned.
Even in day time it will come over to the door and stare at me. I'll take it some food and occasionally it sleeps on the porch but usually underneath. It knows somebody is providing it food and shelter and it's starting to follow me around occasionally.
1 comment:
Yeah, you look like a raccoon dad!
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