by John Miller

Created on: April 27, 2008

As I gaze out the window at the fresh blossoms, green grass and bright sunshine, I am reminded of last Spring when our bird feeder was mysteriously raided and completely cleaned out night after night.

The bird feeder hung out in front of side porch, away from the normal foot traffic to encourage the birds to drop in for a visit. The birds did visit by day and managed to gobble up about half of the seed we left for them each day. Oddly, the next morning we would find the feeder completely empty, something or someone had been raiding the birdfeeder every night.

I couldn't even imagine what would be interested in lowly bird seed, so, I hung out on the porch one night and waited.... A couple hours later, I heard a noise so I flicked on the lights. Lo and behold there were about a half dozen raccoon babies on the grass below the feeder, their little back noses tilted upward. There were four more stretched out along the shepherd's hook pole which supported the bird feeder. Each raccoon was standing on it's sibling's shoulders to form a continuous raccoon chain! All the other siblings were waiting below with anticipation while the very top coon jiggled the feeder to liberate the seed.

It was like a scene from a flea circus, except these guys were about the size of footballs!

They all cleared out when the lights came on, "rats, the gig is up" I thought I heard one mutter as they scrambled away!

I decided I needed to thin the population so I employed a live trap with intent of relocating them to a galaxy far, far away. The babies were eager and easy to catch, caught one per night, easy as pie. After catching ten babies, there was a gap, my bait had been ignored for several nights. I knew the old man was about as I had seen him lurking on the periphery during the nightly bird feeder raids. So, I pulled out the secret weapon, a Wendy's "single with cheese with everything" wrapper stained with the secret sauce.

The secret sauce worked, the next morning I had him!

Normally as I approach a cage with a fresh raccoon in it, they are very aggressive and will sometimes charge my hand as I reach for the handle. This particular coon, wizened with age and silver whiskers, just laid flat on the bottom of the cage and the look on his dejected face seemed to suggest he was beating himself up over something. I suspect it was something like "I knew better, I knew it was a cage, why o why was I sooo stupid!"

I whisked the sorrowful coon off the woods to join the rest of his family where I am sure they will be better off than raiding bird feeders and the occasionally unprotected garbage can!

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