One of the things we learned when we moved to Berkeley is that the East Bay seems to have a lot more wildlife than when I lived in the South Bay or when my husband and I lived on the Peninsula. And of course, being Beserkely, animal control is not really an organization that controls animals but rather, protects them.
Our biggest surprise has been the raccoons. During the first six months in our house, a few times in the early morning I had spotted one when I was checking Jessica’s food and water bowl, not really thinking anything of it, or how dangerous they can be to cats, I was just thinking they were cute. Then one night last fall, at 2:00 a.m. we heard this God-awful hissing sound coming from Jessica. Sure enough on the bedroom terrace was a huge raccoon who I guess was going to pay us a night-time visit, or at least partake of Jessica’s water bowl.
Water bowl, now permanently removed, and no more early pre-dawn romps in the garden for Jessica.
At the end of this past June, we added new little clumps of grass to our front terrace, and thought it looked pretty good. We went to Hawaii for the week of 4th of July. When we came home, we were shocked to find the garden had been completely destroyed! All the grass and new dirt was annihilated! We were certain that a neighborhood dog must have come in and dug up the garden.
The garden was re-done. And that very night, again around 2:00 in the morning we heard another undescribable noise coming from Jessica. She was pissed. We ran down from the top floor to discover her freaking out in front of a window facing the garden. On the other side of the glass was a very young raccoon who was laying on his back paws on the glass with a “come hither, come play look.” When we turned on the light it scampered behind the box for the hose and peeked out.
Then 3 consecutive nights in a row the garden was torn up..ugh. We went on the forums, yes there is a forum in Berkeley just to talk about raccoons…can you imagine? One solution was the “rooster
However, there are 5 little teenaged (as the guy from animal control referred to them as) ones who are still visinting our back terrace as can be seen by the paw marks they leave on the glass. I heard Jessica again one night and ran down stairs to see 3 of the 5 standing on two legs taunting my cat!
Since I have written this post ahead of time (as I am currently on a cruise) so that I do not miss a day during my NaBloPoMo, I hope that those raccoon rebels have not figured out we are not home and have consipired to drive Jessica insane!
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