It’s gettin’ a little dicey around the RD Homestead again.
You’ll recall that, for some time, we were finding Wild Kingdom-style crime scenes in our yard nearly every morning. Those killings appear to have largely stopped, or at least the evidence for them has disappeared. But now we’ve got something new brewing in the yard.
Lawn destruction.
Can I get a witness?
This is some pretty serious destruction.
Added to the mystery is another clue. Several nights a week, at about 3 or 4 am, Caesar the Remarkably Domesticated Dog wakes up and goes slightly ballistic. He clearly hears something outside, and he starts barking and growling and standing on his hind legs at the window of our bedroom. It’s exceedingly disconcerting.
The other night, he was going so crazy I decided to get up to see what was driving him batty. I couldn’t see much in the yard, but as soon as I flipped on a light, I locked eyes with three pretty large raccoons. I wish I had been videotaping it, because they paused for a moment, and we all looked at each other, and then they all started falling over themselves trying to get through the fence and into the ivy and bushes on the other side. If there had been a dialogue to the scene, it would’ve gone like this:
“Dude dude dude GO GO GO!”
“Move it dude, GO! Get outta here!”
“Get the hell outta here! DUDE, get off me, go go GO!”
I only hope you are imagining this dialogue in the young-teenage-boy-caught-redhanded-then-flees voices in which I concocted it.
So, there’s that. Another night, I was watching TV, and Caesar started losing it over something in the front yard. I went to get a flash light, turned it on, and shined it right out the front door window. BLOOP! Immediately the beam hit a large skunk sniffing around the front yard. Incidentally, right where much of this destruction has occurred.
Eye witness testimony would point to the skunk’s guilt, but could one skunk really do all that destruction? Is he/she looking for bugs? What the face? And more importantly, how do I get rid of whatever is doing it?
Any advice for me? What do you think it is? And how do I get it to stop?
I’ll have something new and exciting for you tomorrow, so check back in soon!
That is so odd! I mean, why has whatever wildlife never done this before now? I have never heard of raccoons or skunks doing that. My first thought was a loose dog. But could it be a bear? Are there ever bear sightings around you guys? Mom and dad’s gutter drainage pipe was ripped out of the ground by a black bear in NC. Looking for little critters or mice.
Time to go to the motion-activated night vision cam. I see no other way.