For $40, you can feed a raccoon 4 fish.
We bought a 141 yr-old house, overlooking the Cleveland Zoo, with a large, irregular backyard bigger than the house.
Lady decided to landscape. Started buying used brick and slate. Began a snaking brick-lined slate path, added a brick patio for the beehive, then dug a fishpool and ordered a lining and fountain.
Once the pool was working, she bought 2 small grey koi and 2 large goldfish (orange & white, black & silver). For two days they hid. Third day one started swimming about mid-depth. Fourth day it was near the top. Fifth day 3 fish gone and 4th dead, with the plastic pond lilies they hid beneath torn to shreds and tossed about.
We figure only answer is one of the raccoons, because the two groundhogs, the hosta-eating young buck, the skunk, and the mangy coyote lack the paw hands to pick up one styrofoam lily and tear it apart and pick up the other and toss it 6 foot away.
Fortunately the pool still resonates because the water fountain sound soothes sitting by it, and groups of birds fly down to sip and bathe… and our bees drink from it.
I love life — trees, plant life, fish, birds, animals (people not so much) — and don’t mind helping out, but $40 for one raccoon’s meal is a bit steep.
And oh, my Lady!
Once she was so sweet and innocent, wished violence on nothing and no one. Now she’s thinking dark thoughts about the deer, groundhogs, skunk, and raccoon. Her slide to darkness began when the Cheeto-colored-small-hands-man snuck into the White House and upped his soiling of our culture… it continued when the groundhogs ate her sunflower sprouts, the buck ate her hostas, the skunk doused her rescue dog, and the raccoon ate her fish.
She’s even giving me the wife-eye as I sit here and chuckle.
And on the animal upside, last night I heard a zoo elephant trumpet thrice.
