That pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving break. I went home, which for me is well out of town, in a house up in the hills, so our neighbors include a bunch of raccoons. We’ve taken to feeding the raccoons—we like seeing them around, and feeding them is an effective way to prevent having our garbage or house raided.
Feeding the raccoons has recently turned into a complex ritual, however. First, the raccoons start to gather around the back porch. Usually one or two will stand on the porch knocking against the glass door and standing on their hind feet, but there are always others hiding beneath the porch or in the tree across the fence. Then you have to grab the bag of marshmallows and open the door. Usually at this point you’ll see a lot more raccoons than you did before, not only the ones hiding but also the ones you can’t see from inside.
Next, you toss marshmallows to the raccoons. The quicker raccoons will even go for the ones you toss to other raccoons, so you have to be sort of careful. Once you’re finished with that, you take the dog food bag and fill up the feeder. (No, we didn’t have a feeder installed just for the raccoons. It came with the house.) Raccoons are skittish and will run under the porch and hide when you go out there to fill the feeder, but once you come back in they’ll all come out to eat.
