[Magdalen] Where do they live?

[Jay Weigel]

Trash pandas live wherever they damn well please, although they prefer
holes in trees, I think. We have them hereabouts too, but they stay in the
wooded area and mostly come out at night. Cute critters, but can be vicious
and make a mess when they get into your trash.

The Huntsville, AL minor league baseball franchise (AA, I think) put their
name up for a popular vote and are now the Moon City Trash Pandas--with a
nod to Guardians of the Galaxy.

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 10:14 AM Chad Wohlers <chad at satucket.com> wrote:

> Hah!!!
>
> Just last night I was trying to get some sleep when I was rudely awakened
> by noises outside on the porch. We have bird feeders out there, plus a suet
> feeder attached to a post. I didn’t even have to think about what it was –
> I knew – the racoons were back. There were two of them, trying to open the
> cage which holds the suet and which is secured by a twist-em. I got up and
> opened the door to the porch and they actually went away – after a few
> nights of this they just look at you as if saying “Yeah, so?”. It was only
> 35F or so outside so I wasn’t about to really go out on the porch , dressed
> (or undressed) as I was. They of course came back and I tried to just
> ignore them, but finally did get up and chased them away again. When I got
> up this AM about half the suet was gone, along with the twist-em.
> Eventually they’ll go into hibernation for the winter, but it hasn’t
> happened yet.
>
> And, BTW when I got up there was a thin coating of that dreaded white
> stuff outside – first of the season. It’ll be gone by noon-time, but it’s
> only a harbinger of things to come.
>
> Chad Wohlers
> chad at satucket.com
> Woodbury, VT    USA
>
> From: M J _Mike_ Logsdon
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2018 8:10 AM
> To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
> Subject: [Magdalen] Where do they live?
>
> As I was leaving my bathroom this evening (last evening, I suppose,
> actually) and turned off the light, I saw movement in my small apartment
> backyard.  I'm used to seeing cats on the fence, so that's what I expected,
> but movement is movement, so I needed to investigate.  Keeping the light
> off so I could see, I was struck by three things:  (1) the cat I saw on the
> fence was HUGE, (2) it didn't skitter down the other side of the fence
> immediately as normal, and (3) the striped tail and the bandit mask revised
> my opinion on the spot as to what I was witnessing.
>
> My Backyard Masked Animal showed no typical animosity as often seen on TV,
> but that could've been because it was smart enough to know that a face
> looking out of a dark room in a building was hardly gonna leap out and
> challenge it.  It quickly, but smoothly, made its way down the other side
> of the fence like the cats do, but with no sign of anxiety on its part
> whatsoever.
>
> Yes, it was my first raccoon.  But being a city dweller where such things
> are seldom seen, that shouldn't be a surprise.  And I did look up and find
> the following, which explains a bit:
>
> "New habitats which have recently been occupied by raccoons (aside from
> urban areas) include mountain ranges, such as the Western Rocky Mountains,
> prairies and coastal marshes.  After a population explosion starting in the
> 1940s, the estimated number of raccoons in North America in the late 1980s
> was 15 to 20 times higher than in the 1930s, when raccoons were
> comparatively rare.  Urbanization, the expansion of agriculture, deliberate
> introductions, and the extermination of natural predators of the raccoon
> have probably caused this increase in abundance and distribution."
> (Wikipedia excerpt.)
>
> Its a reference beyond ("aside from") urban areas, which my area basically
> is, but, still, -- where does such a clearly well-fed raccoon actually
> live?  Grant you, I'm not terribly far from hundreds of miles of ag fields,
> but something made this well-fed monster decide to "come into town and make
> a night of it".  Would such a creature maybe have an actual life here, in
> town, even in my neighborhood?  Doesn't bother me one whit.  I'm just
> curious.
>
> And my Masked Friend makes the second "wild" animal I've encountered in
> this part of my town.  Long ago, my route to work was detoured to the
> extreme to make ample room for law enforcement and animal specialists to
> deal with the (from what I remember) very young bear that somehow made it
> into the neighborhood I actually now live in.  Raccoons, yes.  But bears?
> They happen in Monterey and Carmel all the time, because they have heavily
> wooded areas close nearby, and can actually be said to be situated within
> same.  But Salinas Valley flatland?  All I can admit to right now, is that
> we do have "mountains ranges" nearby.
>
> M J (Mike) Logsdon.
>
> "Aaugh[.]" -- Charles Brown.
> "Avoid dull needles and use a soft cloth." -- E Kovacs.
> "Because that's the kind of guy, I'm." -- C Reiner, "Your Show of Shows",
> skit: "From Here to Obscurity".
>
>
>