Koi & Goldfish 6 - Raccoons 0

I am so happy to have seen seven different raccoons in our backyard the past several weeks and none of them has caught a fish in our pond! Before I deepened and enlarged our fish ponds, I had gotten used to losing fish once they got to "good eating" size. As we begin to say goodbye to summer and look ahead to early fall (when raccoon raids have been the most destructive) it has been a pleasure to sit and watch the fish at their most active time. It has also been fun to have walked outside just as different raccoons have been crossing our pond bridge without trying to catch our fish! (By the time I had run inside for the camera, the raccoons were already in the tree or over the wall. I did get this lone 'coon as well as two of a group of four visiors.)

Summer is almost here . . . and raccoons have arrived!

The unofficial beginning of summer came and went (Sam, Jenn, and Meg came down for the Memorial Day holiday and we all went to UCLA for the Reggae Festival). A couple of days ago, we celebrated Hannah's, Dillon's, and several others' graduations from high school. That same day was Tom's last day of teaching for the year and yesterday I cleaned and re-did the pond while Tom cleaned his classroom and put it away for the summer. It's still not June 21st but summer is here!

For the past two weeks, we have suspected a raccoon has been in the yard. Thankfully, it appears to have given up trying to catch anything in the ponds (too deep and steep - yay!) but the water bowls have been muddy every morning and I've seen tracks here and there. This morning, as I was about to get dressed for work, I saw this Mom and Cub coming out from under our backporch. I quickly turned on my FlipVideo and followed them as they climbed over the fence. The cub saw me and climbed the tree but Mom climbed up after it (after I had gone inside for a while) and pretty soon they both came down again. Don't know why they came out in daylight.

Yippee! Another Unsuccessful Racoon Attack

After several years of coming to our backyard ponds and cleaning them out of all fish in September and October, we hope that last night's second unsuccessful fishing expedition will reinforce the message not to go fishing in the Hundley ponds. Last time, the intruder(s?) knocked some rocks, plants, and knick knacks from the waterfall in the big pond and knocked the fountain tubing out of the square pond so that it lost about 30 inches of water. All fish survived that night. Last night, it/they messed up the water lilies but seem to have left the square pond alone. (The two goldfish living in that pond have learned to stay down deep and hardly ever come all the way to the top anymore.) They knocked over the big pottery urn and disconnected the hose from the pump in the big pond, but all fish are accounted for. Knock-on-wood that the masked critters give up and go somewhere else. (Actually, they are soooooo cute, that I wouldn't mind them just visiting and maybe just drinking from our outdoor water bowls - but that is probably too much to ask!)

It's Hard to Hate Something This Cute But . . .

After weeks of waking up to a vandalized fish pond, I finally met the culprit face-to-face in the wee hours of the night last night.As you can see, he was quite wet and had already been in the pond several times. Whenever the ScareCrow would shoot him/her with water, the raccoon would run away. A couple of seconds later, it headed back into the pond. Tom threw little rocks at it but it seems quite at home under the house and in our yard!It's too bad I've always been fascinated by raccoons and their cute faces and intelligent ways. Now that the koi are safe in their deep pond, I've gotten used to losing goldfish once or twice a year. If they didn't do so much damage to the plants and fountains, I could live with these masked varmints.
Before we leave this topic, take a look at this little video I shot in early September. You can see what this "small nocturnal carnivore" destroyed: