Sosie’s old story posted below, about the raccoon in her yard, reminded me of our days on Canyon Ridge in Eden Prairie.
Our two-story walkout perched on the edge of a ravine. A small fenced back yard provided an exercise area for our little black poodle, Daisy. Kathleen would carefully monitor this yard with a plastic shovel, tossing any discoveries randomly over the fence to spread down over the ravine, where it would recycle in nature’s way of dealing with this kind of thing. Very ecological, very convenient. But we had no idea at the time of all the benefits.
Our next door neighbor didn’t have a dog, but he did have raccoons. He fought as diligently as Sosie did. But no amount of bungee cords, lights or devices would keep those 'coons off his back deck. The marauders intruded constantly in a way we thought most comical, because right next door we never had a problem with raccoons violating our turf. We had no idea why this was, until we thought about it years later.
Daisy never weighed more than eight pounds and was certainly no match for a raccoon. But apparently her ever-freshened widely-scattered patch of business cards packed a very powerful message to would-be interlopers.
