Sunday, October 16

Urban Wildlife

Tonight while eating dinner outside in the front yard, we started to hear the raccoons that live in our front tree waking up. The tree was shaking and rustling, leaving the kids with mixed feelings. Matilda was fairly apprehensive and expressed a desire to move our dinner party indoors. Porter was excited by it all and using the raccoons as yet another excuse to get out of his chair and avoid actually eating. (His appetite seems to be in a waning phase currently.) We all continued eating, keeping half an eye on the tree as we hoped for a chance to see the raccoons. After not too long, Porter let out a blood curdling scream and came running for me from where he had been fooling around halfway across the yard. Tim, Matilda and I looked up to see a fuzzy little raccoon face peering down at us all from his perch on the front edge of our roof. Poor Porter was so surprised and terrified; I really had to fight my laughter to reassure him. The raccoon was so unfazed by us all that Tim joked how the critter must believe he has an invisibility cloak on. 

After a few minutes recovery, Porter and Matilda both were intrigued and excited. They were rewarded with two more raccoons wandering out across the roof. The trio all went over to sniff at our chimney (reminding us maybe a sweep is in order before fire season), before they went up over the peak of the roof and towards the back tree to climb down. 
For our encore wildlife, we saw a skunk wandering the back driveway not 30 minutes later. Very eventful around here tonight!

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