Footprints

[james_davis_nicoll]

When I left the place where I am feeding some cats to catch a bus at 6 PM, there was a thin layer of fresh snow. I noticed as I walked along that there were foot prints in the snow, fresh foot prints, clearly from a raccoon. In fact, they were so fresh that four of them still had a raccoon foot in them. The feet were connected to a raccoon that was in process of sharpening its claws on the post on someone's front porch and it looked it had been caught doing something that it was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to do. We contemplated each other for a while but decided to leave our acquaintance at that. I went to catch my bus and when I last saw it, it was strolling down the side-walk in the other direction.

Comments

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I have had as many as seven or eight raccoons on my back deck at my last place when I was stupid and left cat food out at night. The cats loved it better than TV (they were safely on the inside of the sliding glass door).

It's the only way I've been able to be less than six inches from a skunk, too.

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

Here in Vancouver and suburbs, there are TONS of raccoons -- I've only seen two skunks (live ones, anyway). Once my wife and I turned the corner and there was one a meter or two away from us, so close we could hear its claws on the pavement.

Up at SFU, sometimes we see a family of raccoons (like 2 large, 3 small) waiting for the bus. Once I saw four of them kind of ambling away from my general direction. I tossed a food wrapper in a nearby garbage can, and after a brief rustle it came back up on a fifth raccoon's head.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm in western Washington state (about an hour south of Seattle) so we're in the same region for the purpose of wildlife sighting.

No wonder we're seeing the same kinds of animals [g].

BTW, did the raccoons' bus ever arrive???