Public Enemy #1

For the last month I have been waging a war and I hate to admit it but I'm losing.

My opponent.....The Raccoon. Normally any animal around which we see a lot of, we'd name but this one being a foe remains “The Raccoon or The Dam Raccoon.”
His presence has been sporadic throughout the winter months, leaving evidence of muddy paw prints and even muddier cat food dishes.

This raccoon has attitude and on more than one occasion we have stared each other down.Shoo raccoon, shoo shoo....ha ha ha, doesn't even warrant a look up from the cat food she(he?) is chowing down. Stomping my feet and waving my arms only gets me a look that says “what's your problem?” Time to get the broom. Whack! He does get moving but not very fast, mind you. He'll wattle to the closest exit, some obvious other not so much so.

One by one I've closed them off. Their crafty little buggers though and will detour around my blockades. In the past week we have come down to one final piece of land,
a 6ft stretch at the back wall of the basement which is easy digging in the sandy gravel. His nightly excavation has me devising new ways to fortify “The Wall” each day.

Scrape wood shoved onto the dirt against the existing wall and than milk cartons filled with rocks put in front of that are found dragged aside, the boards strewn about and another hole dug under the boards. I'm rather amazed at how strong they are. When the raccoon made an appearance in front of the guys who were here last week they immediately said what I had to do was nail the boards, “That will keep them out, it's how you have to do it.” So I did.......and this is what he did.

OK, I'm going to take care of this once and for all and likely should have done this right from the get go. Better late than never. I was going into the cement business.

First I dug a small trench at the battle ground and filled it with cement, making a nice thick slurry, than I covered it with the loose gravel which the raccoon had so thoughtfully left in a pile. Let him try to dig under the boards this time! Now all I had to do was wait and see if the dam raccoon got in tonight.
Victory is mine. Such a silly thing to go on about but it's just all part of a caretakers life.