Welcome to the Jungle!!

Ben and I were watching t.v. last Thursday, and I kept hearing weird rustling in the back yard. Naturally, I thought it was a cat burglar, dressed all in black, with the little eye mask. But the cat was outside, and she didn't seemed too bothered about it. When I was getting ready to go to sleep, I had to check it out. I flipped on the outside light and looked towards the back corner of the yard. As I squinted, I saw a big fat raccoon. And as my eyes adjusted and I looked again, I saw 4 babies.

They had been eating our giant figs and had trampled our tree to bits. I opened the screen door and tried to get the cat inside. She had been sitting on the doorstep for a while, but hesitated to come inside. I think she may not have wanted to turn her back on the big mama 'coon. As I persuaded kitty inside, Mama really got on the offensive. She moved closer and took a defensive posture and just stared.















It was quite scary to look into the eyes of a wild animal who would do anything to protect her babies.

We closed the screen door, and the sliding glass door too, and watched the babies make themselves at home in our back yard. They found a wiffle ball to pounce on, and one tried to stand with all four paws on our Mickey soccer ball. Then, I imagine they must be boys, they all decided to wrestle. We tried to get pics, but Ben wouldn't let me go outside to do it, so we have glare and night lighting issues going on. I wanted so badly to wake up the boys and show them the wild life circus in our back yard :)
Every night now I wait to see if I can hear them in that tree again. Ben fixed the loose plank in the fence... but the whole fence is so deteriorated that they will find another week plank and be through in no time.

Good news is.... no more bees :P