Annoying Neighbors

We have a family that live near us that can be pretty annoying. They don't have any concept of personal space, they harass our cats, they steal from us (we're still hoping they'll return all the dishes they took!) and they are always hanging out, begging for food. They also keep us up at night with their racket. If they weren't so entertaining, we might have a major problem.




You may remember this family -- Back in June we adopted one of their children they'd abandoned. But we hadn't seen anything of them until a month ago when we began feeding our cats on the back porch. DH & I were alerted to their presence by a serious racket on our back porch one night. About 6 to 8 raccoons had climbed the flight of stairs and were gorging themselves on our cat's food. The first time I went out there, the one two feet away raised himself to his full 30 inch height and stared at me for a minute before taking off for the safety of the forest. Three of his buddies joined him. I looked over to the corner where we have a large bin with a lid we keep the cat food in. It looked untouched and I thought, “Oh good, they didn’t get into the big bag of food.” At that moment, the bin’s lid popped up, and a raccoon popped out!

They don’t seem excessively frightened by us – once when we caught them, one of them had his hand in the cat food and looked up at us with a nonchalant expression, just like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he coolly wandered off and down the stairs. They are hilarious. Since then, they seem to show up more and more often, searching out the food. Most nights, we remember to bring the food in when it gets dark, but there have been a few nights we've forgotten. Last night, we had brought the food in but we heard tapping on the sliding glass door. We looked over and saw a raccoon with his face pressed up to the glass, as if to say, "Hey, where's my food?"

Comments

kacy faulconer said…
He knocked on the door for food? That is so funny. I can't believe I never see these guys.