Subject: Varmint Terror 101
Date: Feb 25 09:54:02 2004
From: Pterodroma at aol.com - Pterodroma at aol.com


Holy Cow! Imagine my surprise to find one of my favorite hummingbird feeders
of 10+ years that was securely wrapped *and tied* to the wisteria *under* the
eaves of the back porch entirely ripped down, wire and all, and smashed into
oblivion on the patio this morning. The suspect terrorist: a raccoon now
dubbed Osama who I quite by chance discovered last night apparently in the act
although I didn't realize what it was doing until daylight this morning as it was
making it's way up the porch support to the roof. Although this is the first
raccoon I've seen around here in several years, it's appearance last night
also probably explains the construction and excavations in a nearby massive cave
complex in an impossibly impenetrable tangle of rhodies on a ruggedly steep
unstable slope to the south which I call Bora-Bora btw, and the wanton damage
and destruction of many plants there intended to hold everything in place,
either by total burial or chewing off the branches. The excavations and all the
damage occurred sometime last fall while I was away on a 4-month long
bird/mammal research cruise down south in the tropical Pacific. As I had neither seen
nor heard any recent sign of anything up there in the cave complex all winter,
day or night, I've been perplexed as to who or what had devastated some 50
feet of fence line, ranging from rats to mountain beaver to the passing thought
of raccoon at one point. Even my new human neighbors on the south weren't
beyond suspect. But now, I think only a raccoon could move so many buckets of
soil, gravel, and the 500lb rocks ... well, maybe I exaggerate about the rocks;
the biggest ones were more like 1-2lbs ... but seemed like 500lbs after
sifting out the soil to save then hauling bucket after bucketfulls of rocks and
gravel down to dump in the creek in the greenbelt that runs through the back. I
shudder to think that the overnight attack may have in fact been provoked by my
blasting out some of the caves and plugging some of the holes that I could
reach over the weekend. Now that Osama's out in the open and on the run, at
least controlling a raccoon might be easier than rats or mountain beavers had
they been the perps. A raccoon could probably be easily live trapped and then
cast into exile far far away to Eastern Washington or beyond. A more likely
scenario may be to just acknowledge the problem and let nature take it's course.
As this is an Eastgate suburban area, it's probably going to look left when
it should have looked right one night and wind up squashed on the road at some
point.

And that's not the only problem with backyard wildlife around here. My
deranged junco is back. Last Spring, this insane male 'Oregon' Junco started
attacking itself in the right side view mirror on my car under the carport. This
went on for three months nonstop all day long, sunrise to sunset. Cute for a
while but you can only imagine the mess and the irreparable scratches. Now I
have two cars, one under the carport, the other out in the open in the
driveway, and two weeks ago he showed up again and started going after the right side
mirrors on BOTH cars ...but ONLY the right ones, ...which obviously leaves me
or anyone else to assume that this particular junco is an extremely deranged
liberal left leaning beast. I've at least temporarily fixed the problem by
folding in the right mirror on the older Subaru that I don't drive much and by
putting a paper shopping bag over the right mirror on the shiny new Forester.
The left side mirrors remain untouched ...of course.

So my question to Tweeters: Does anyone know a good psycho-vet who deals
specifically with severe 'Oregon' Junco mental disorders? Probably none around
here I suppose, but perhaps there's one down in Oregon somewhere and this bird
clearly needs to be institutionalized.

????!! Yikes!!!

BREAKING NEWS.... The wind just came up with a vengeance (rare here); trees
and limbs snapping all over the neighborhood, glass shattering, lines down,
transformers exploding, sirens everywhere; the worst I've seen here since the
freak 3-second downburst a few years ago left me with 8 hours of cleanup. It was
bad enough yesterday with a gun-toting nut case running loose around here as
sirens blared and news choppers circled overhead. And, I just lost another
hummingbird feeder to a falling branch -- TWO now in less than less than 12
hours! I've never lost or broken any before. That leaves me with only five.
Hummingbirds are in a panic needless to say. And this used to be such quiet
neighborhood. It's nature run amuck! -- terror! -- run for your lives! -- duck
and cover! -- ............................."poink!"

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Richard Rowlett
Seattle / Bellevue (Eastgate), WA, USA

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought" --Albert Szent-Gyorgi (1893-1986).
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