Special Note: Since my last post moaning about my computer problems, my new computer system has arrived. While this seems like a PRESTO solution, things are always more complicated under the surface. I’m still limping and asking for your patience. Slowly, very slowly, I’m getting files and settings on the new computer. Gazing still at my Y2K snowglobe, I see a trip to the computer tech guys in my near future.
Meanwhile here’s a true story about Godzilla Raccoon.
Raccoons love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I found this out years ago, when we first moved into this house. The raccoons in our woods were cute and friendly, so I fed them. Through the years, raccoon generations have come and gone. The last group somehow disconnected the wires to the fans on top of the roof and got into the attic to live. You could hear them roaming around, scratching, waking up for their nightly foray around the back yard looking for food, especially the dog food.
The dead give-away was the rising temperature in our upstairs – in lock-sync with the rising temperature in the attic where the hot air built up every day; how the raccoons lived in that heat is a mystery.
We managed to trap that group in our Have-a-Heart cage by luring them in with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They now live down in the country in those woods.
So, who is this NEW masked stranger, able to screw off the lids to the plastic garbage cans in our garage that hold the dog food and the birdseed, who’s roamings caused our Lab, Maggie, to wake at all hours of the night, run down the stairs, barking until we wake to let her bound out into the dark? It must be Godzilla Raccoon. He must have filled the void in the territory of our back yard.
All these goings on went on for several months. Night after night. Grrrrr.
Now, our white cat, Patty Cake, is a fat cat. 
She lies around a lot in a most undignified position -- on her back, feet spread, tail flat on the floor. I figured that is why she seemed to always be whining for more food every morning. Or was Maggie sneaking downstairs to eat her cat food and lick the bowl every night? In any case, I filled it up a lot.
Recently I woke up in the middle of the night. I was on my way downstairs for a glass of milk. Just as I got to the bottom and rounded the corner to the kitchen, Maggie came out of nowhere, bounding down the stairs, barking at the top of her lungs. Then I saw it:
A very bushy tail was diving out the cat door. Godzilla Raccoon.
The next morning I spotted the evidence and got a picture of it. Everything I know about forensics I got from CSI. HA! The culprit’s footprints.
My turn to set a trap. I don’t know what I thought I would do if it worked, but I sneaked out in the middle of the night when Maggie was deep in sleep, camera in hand. Then it happened!
Here Godzilla comes.
Closer.
Very close!
Oh, my gawd, it’s Rocky Raccoon’s little brother! A baby. I’m not thinking of trapping him/her. At least not for now.
But we did have to board up the cat door.
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