Close encounters with the wild life…..

05 March

The ones who know me a bit, know that I am city girl. Grown up in big city, the wild animals in my entourage are limited to wild cats and dogs and cockroaches. Well, I do love animals and have always been interested in them. At some point in my life, becoming a veterinarian crossed my mind.
When P showed me the house and said that the deer came in the garden, I found it quite poetic. Deers are beautiful animals. The one dead mouse by the sump pump was not a big problem; the exterminator came and ‘exterminated’ it all anyway.
When we first drove home with the kids, a squirrel crossed the road and I jumped on the cars seat in excitement, a childish joy. And the first week, we looked at the deer coming closer by, beautiful.
Second week, P said that he saw a raccoon. There is a raccoon nest right outside the window, under the big wooden box. Please check Wikipedia about the worm that the raccoon very often carry with it. Especially for toddlers it can be fatal. Well, there goes the romantic and the beauty of being so close to the wild life. Welcome nightmare. When I hear something about it, it keeps me out of my sleep. I think I already spend two nights torturing myself about how to protect the kids. Walking inside this house with outside shoes is from now on prohibited. The deck will be disinfected with the steam machine and the raccoon has to be removed.
So I went to the neighbors, to ask if they had experience with raccoons. Today, Kim was here with the phone number of a person who sets up traps and she said he was very good at his job and that he had quite some experience with this neighborhood - I am not surprised. She told me the story of a family having several raccoons and several skunks under their deck. ‘And sometimes’ she said to me ‘you hear the coyote taking down a deer. Then you hear a sound like a crying animal’. We heard it twice since we moved here, twice in three weeks. Monday, Nick the trap hero will be here. We will see what we will catch. And I am serious about disinfecting the garage and the deck. I will do the same with the play set outside. I don’t know what to do with the whole yard, should I just water it with hot water??