Where the Wild Things Are

Groan.

It has been quite the week for wild animals.

The first was a mouse.  Kevin and I were sitting in the basement, watching a video, when suddenly a mouse ran out from Kevin's (dark) workshop, into our brightly lit TV room.

I behaved as any sensible 46 year old, mature woman would do.

I screamed like a little girl.  For like, a minute.  Or 30 seconds?  A fair amount of time. And I pulled my feet onto the couch. And then I screamed. Oh right, I already mentioned that.

Kevin was laughing at me and trying to find the mouse, and the mouse (sensibly enough) headed for the dark parts of the basement to get away from the screaming big thing that was me.

Where there is one mouse, there are almost certainly more mice, so Kevin put out poison in out of the way places.

We don't have indoor cats and Rose doesn't wander down there alone, so it should be fine.

So yeah, a mouse.

Then, the next night, Kevin saw a raccoon attacking our trash can. Attacking.  I mean, not in the "I want to kill you" sort of way but in the "I know you are full of delightful food" kind of way.

So the NEXT night, Kevin put out tasty cat food on our front porch (we usually bring it in at night) and stalked the porch until like 10:30 p.m., when not one, not two, but three raccoons showed up to eat our cat food.

3.

So that's why we've been finding trash out of our trash cans!

He tried to shoot them but missed killing any of them, sigh.

Last night they were back. Like, the next night. After some big person with a gun shot at them 7 times.  No one said raccoons were smart. But they are hungry.

Last night, it was another attack on the trash cans. They are now shut with bungee cords and I can't even get them open, so the raccoons, however clever they might be with inflitrating trash cans, are out of luck.

They are now officially nuisance animals.  Kevin is going to shoot them.  Soon.

He is careful with our guns, very careful.  But we're glad to have guns when creatures are eating our cat food (I mean, non cat creatures) and eating our chickens (that was in the past) and emptying our trash cans.

Stay tuned.