Tag Archives: nature

The Wild Life – Part II – Even Wilder Wild Things

Posted in Random Stories by

The hanging flower baskets on the deck outside our bedroom looked like they had been attacked, insulted and then run over.

What could have done such a thing?

It was a mystery we intended to solve. We decided to re-hang what was left of the bedraggled plants and sleep with the curtains open to keep an eye on things.

After just one night we knew that our baskets were victims of raccoons. Our deck was their playground and the hanging plants were the swings. Our next-door-neighbour’s deck was their toilet so we were luckier than they were but it was annoying and noisy.

We tried to make the baskets less entertaining by tying them to their hooks with wires (to keep them hanging no matter what) and even oiled the plastic rods and pots to make them impossible to grip but it seemed like that just made it more fun. The whoops and thumps of raccoon joy continued.

I thought we should give up on the baskets – take them down and move on. My husband, Michael, was not pleased with this strategy but agreed.

The raccoons may have been bored without their swing but they continued to enjoy our deck.

At first we thought they were wrestling which was kind of cute. But it wasn’t just wrestling and it wasn’t cute at all. They were having obnoxiously loud raccoon sex*. On our chaises.

We joked that we’d somehow built a raccoon ‘Lido Deck’ but it wasn’t that funny. That deck was supposed to be for our enjoyment not hard-core rodent raunch.

Ew.

“That just isn’t right!”


“Seriously. It’s our deck,” Michael told me with a crazed glint in his eye after a particularly bad night.

I had no answer. They were getting to us both.

“They hate fresh mint,” my mother told me. “And mothballs. You should cover your deck in mint and mothballs.”

Despite the mediocre results of my last attempt at pest control with seasoning, I was willing to try the mint. But not the mothballs. I didn’t want a deck that smelled like an old person’s closet. I went out early in the day and jammed mint sprigs into all the cracks.

It didn’t work.

I came home late one evening to a silent house. I called out but there was no answer even though Michael’s shoes were at the door.

On the second floor the blue light of the television flickered and glowed on mute but he wasn’t there. I called out again. I was getting a little worried.

I went up to the third floor and there he was, my husband, crouched low to the ground with his face pressed to the screen door, a garden hose in one hand poking out between the doors. He turned to me and mouthed ‘Hi!’ He blew me half-assed kiss then did the finger to the lip motion, and turned back to the deck.

“How long have you been like that?” I asked, trying not to sound alarmed.

“I don’t know but I’ve given them some major soakers,” he whisper-giggled, staring into the night. A wet raccoon glared back from just out of range. Michael tugged at the hose but it only reached the door and the raccoon knew it.

Michael shook his head and pushed himself off the floor. He handed me the hose and walked to the bathroom. “They’re smart! I’ll give them that.”

He was back a moment later with a tall glass of water. He pulled the screen doors apart very slowly. The raccoon on the railing tensed but didn’t move. Suddenly, Michael lunged and emptied the glass at the raccoon then jumped back in and slammed the doors together, laughing like a madman.

I was married to Elmer Fudd!

“We need to call someone,” I told him. “This has to stop.”

“Why?” he asked, still watching the deck.

“Well, because this just isn’t normal. This isn’t good, you know? Lying here in the dark. With the hose and everything. It’s weird. I think we need professional help.”


JPChamberland / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A great pest control professional isn’t cheap but they are worth it.** Our professional help (aka our hero) told us that the raccoons were living under the deck in the space between the wood slats and the roof. If we closed that off, there would be no problem. We were in. He cleared them out and chicken-wired the gap between the deck and the roof. When he was done, I went out and stuffed mint into every crevice for good measure.

The raccoons were outraged at first but after a few nights, they gave up and an uneasy truce developed. They didn’t go far – we would see them scurrying along our fence, or watching from the tree while Michael barbequed, and occasionally they would walk right up to the back door and bang on the glass in a menacing way – but the deck was ours again.

Mostly.

We were sure that our little man versus nature scuffles were behind us and that we had won. We were blissfully unaware that there was more nature lurking nearby – a creature so hideous that it would scare its own mother. But that is a story for another day.

* I do not know what ‘normal’ sounds like when it comes to raccoon sex but the volume seemed a bit over the top, like they were trying to make a point.

** This post (and Part I) was inspired by a post by Ethan Yarbrough that reminded me of how grateful we were (and still are!) to the ‘raccoon relocation experts’ we hired. http://ethanyarbroughwrites.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/truths/

Our first daughter and her buddy almost two years after this story.

Our first daughter and her buddy two years later.

Photo credit for ‘Isaac/Love Boat’ picture: Shavar Ross / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Wild Life – Part 1

Posted in Random Stories by

When we bought our house in downtown Toronto, the wild-life I envisioned had more to do with the early throes of romantic love and the total freedom of my life at the time than the creatures that live nearby. I certainly never thought about animals.

We were thrilled to have our house – excited to the point of being keen to do yard work. As soon as the weather was nice enough, we hit the nursery to buy pretty things for our garden.

Our yard is tiny (average living room size) so once we had flowers, making it beautiful did not take long. I had been warned by my mother, an avid gardener and something of a squirrel specialist, that squirrels can be a threat to plants and added a healthy dose of bone meal to the soil to deter them.

Within hours, my husband and I were relaxing in a flowery paradise, toasting each other with wine, extremely pleased with ourselves.

I now realize that the squirrels were most likely watching and licking their twitchy little lips because the next morning, we discovered that they had feasted like, well, animals, on our gorgeous display.

I called my mother.

She suggested that we try again but make our flowers less delicious. She told me to sprinkle cayenne pepper all over the new plants and that once the puffy-tailed rats got a fiery taste of what we were serving, word would spread and our garden would be safe.

We returned to the nursery, bought new plants for the yard, and added a couple of nice hanging baskets for the deck outside our bedroom.

Ever so slightly less cheerfully than the day before, we planted our plants and hung our baskets. Again, we celebrated with cocktails and enjoyed the evening in our yard.

I was brushing my teeth when I remembered about the cayenne.

I ran downstairs, grabbed the spice and went outside.

It was dark but I could see well enough as I liberally seasoned the flowers. It took the whole bag but it was worth it.

I went to bed confident that my garden was safe.

Other than an obnoxious squeal outside our window (that in hindsight sounded a lot like ‘WoooooHoooooo!’), that stirred us briefly, we slept like logs.

The next morning, we opened the drapes, ready to admire our pretty hanging baskets but found them scattered on the deck, crushed petals and dirt sprinkled all around like they had been attacked.

“How did that happen?” we asked each other.

We walked out – picking our way around the plant destruction – and looked over the railing of our balcony to check on our yard two storeys below. We were pleased to see that our plants were still there.

That was when we noticed the smell.

“Wow!” said my husband. “Someone is cooking up a feast and it’s making me hungry. Let’s go for brunch and deal with this mess later.”

As we went downstairs, the cooking odour got stronger.

Curry.

A lot of curry.

Then curry overload.

I went to the spice drawer and opened it. A bag of Cayenne sat on top. Missing was the very similar looking bag of Curry Powder.


Chris Falt / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I had dumped the entire bag in our yard.

As it turned out, we could smell our house from three blocks away. But, as it also turned out: squirrels do not enjoy curry (at least not in massive quantities). Our garden was temporarily protected.

The smell lasted about four days and our plants survived a little longer than that.

I called it a draw.

I didn’t know that this was just the beginning – that nature was at our doorstep, in our garden, and on our deck and that it would drive us to near madness. I had no idea that we would soon find out what had destroyed our hanging baskets. Or that I would eventually know more than I could ever hope to forget about raccoons and their love lives, or that I would learn the difference between a Shanghai King Rat and a Possum.

All I knew then was that we were out of curry.