Raccoon Wars

When I was younger I used to collect Raccoon statues, I still have a few of them.  Who couldn't resist those adorable masked faces?  They are CUTE!

  There are also a nuisance.  Especially when you have a decorative pond you would like to keep that way!  Jim is beside himself thinking of new ways to keep them from enjoying our raccoon "waterpark"just shy of barbed wire and a machine gun nest!  He wants to electrify the outer edges which makes me worry that critters that we want to use the pond like owls and rabbits will also get shocked in the process!  I don't want to wake to a war zone of dead bodies.  Thanks to the raccoons and their nimble fingers our pond is down 6 inches of water every day and needs constant re-filling.  We know there is a leak -somewhere thanks to the masked wrecking crew,  and it will be a pain to try and find it.  

There was a rock in the pond that had a perfectly round hole in it, we love unique rocks so we had it in a special place right under the waterfall and was thinking of putting a pretty tea light in it.   The raccoons also liked it and thought how nice, "they've installed a porta potty for us and would fill the hole with poop! If it wasn't so disgusting it would be hilarious.  Jim got sick of cleaning poop out of it every day and moved it to the bottom of the creek bed and they are still using it! Little hellions! They have over 4 acres of bathroom and they have to poop on our pond? Monsters! 👿

Partially screened pond

Poop rock

But I guess that is life in the woods.  Never a dull moment like yesterday when I turned our bedroom AC unit on and it made a weird cracking noise like something was stuck in it. Then all of a sudden a big scorpion came flying out of it like a bullet, thoroughly pissed off with tail curled and narrowly missing me!  Thankfully Jim's shoe was nearby I squished it and flushed it.  Sometimes we would like less adventure than dodging flying scorpions and cleaning raccoon poop. And rural Florida is one of the few places where you might hear a phrase like ,"honey could you please remove the wolf spider from the dishwasher?  That has happened more than once.  But this is our life for now till we say -ENOUGH! Time to move on and let young people buy our wonderland.  And that day may be coming soon.