Raccoon Fiasco

To explain what happened Tuesday, I first need to tell a story. Almost a month ago at around 3:30a.m., my dog Ginger was barking. I got up out of bed to yell at her, and heard rustling in the bushes. When I walked into the kitchen, I immediately smelled SKUNK. This smell is not unusual for our neighborhood, as we live right behind a big field, and behind that is the levee. The smell seemed very strong, however, and I quickly realized why she was not letting up. The skunk was trying to get away, sprayed, and she was barking at it in the bush. Needless to say, she ended up defeating the skunk (2nd time we've found a dead skunk in our backyard now!).. GO Ginger! ;) The only downside-- my house smelled like skunk for probably at least 3 weeks! I thought since the back door was opened when it happened, I should probably leave it open the rest of the night to air out my house. Well, didn't work! Anyway, early in the morning Tuesday I heard Ginger barking (sounded just like the night of the skunk), and heard her chasing something... I just prayed she didn't get sprayed again, and went back to sleep. When I woke up, the boys and I went outside to play and I started looking for a dead animal. Couldn't find anything. Then I noticed Ginger kept trying to get something, and she'd jump up on the fence, and kept looking up like into the trees... I walked over to where she was, and there wasn't anything in the tree. Then I saw it- a RACCOON! It was all the way up the electrical pole, and wasn't moving. In fact, it looked like it was twitching. Elijah said, "Look Mom, it's blowing in the wind!" LOL. THERE WAS NO WIND! I figured she chased it up there and it got shocked and died. I took a couple pictures of it up there to show Kevin (Does that sound morbid!?). Later in the afternoon, Jaron came by to mow our lawn. We were outside chatting when we noticed the raccoon was facing the opposite direction. Long story short- It was alive, and apparently SLEEPING earlier that morning. Who knows how long it would've been up there, so Kevin got his air-soft gun, and started shooting it. As you can see from the pictures, he was NOT happy about that. Kevin and Kyle took turns, and eventually he FINALLY came down, lol. We got a good laugh outta this. Ginger's turning out to be quite the watch dog!

Tyler playing in the dog house :)

Elijah having fun
This was the first picture- when he looked and acted dead

As you can see- he was plenty alive!

He's not so happy here

He tried walking the line- didn't work too well, so he finally shimmied down the pole :)