.
A very good raccoon page here:
http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/raccoon.htm
with pictures, and recordings of raccoon noises. Recommendation: don't play the noises while your cat is in the room.
.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is the annexe to the OtherStuff site
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(22)
-
▼
January
(7)
- Further to... the two films -- Beyond the Pale
- Further to... a bit more Finlay (because we like him)
- Further to... "sky-like attitude"/"infinite touch ...
- Further to... Raccoons
- Further to... Ian Hamilton Finlay: Blues
- Further to... Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Sparta
- Further to... File's Residual Definitions -- by Be...
-
▼
January
(7)
15 comments:
And if you prefer foxes, this is a good site:
http://www.thesittingfox.co.uk/Photos%20and%20Sounds.htm
There is something intrinsically adorable about racoons - and meercats.
Zeph,
Absolutely wonderful.
The "coo" is the call they evidently make at polite parties.
The "distress call" is exactly what we hear going on most nights up on our makeshift roof, during their territorial skirmishes.
The "purr" is wondrous happy talk. (Pretty clear why that's one humans rarely get to hear.)
And the videos, maybe even better. Very interested to see that the heron (or egret?) and the raccoon appear to show no antipathy. (Perhaps Holly should be shown this video, for instructional purposes?)
As for that night-vision view of the raccoon stealthily making off with the bobwhite eggs, Madame B., a great lover of fairness (as well as, of course, cheese) commented, "hard cheese for the bird".
(By the way, we made sure not to play the sound clips until all the cats were safely snoozing...)
...And they are so wonderfully intrepid one can't but admire them.
Nor can one intimidate them.
We leave bread out for them, but sometimes they have been known to try to accelerate the deliveries by simply venturing in, if there's an open door.
Madame B reminds of the time when we heard a noise on the stairs coming up from our daughter's downstairs bedroom. She was not at home--so who could it be. We peered down the stairs, and there, waddling confidently up the stairs toward us, was a raccoon. It proceeded to exit the house at its own pace, evidently having checked things out to its satisfaction (or dissatisfaction, more like).
As to the statement on the site that raccoons live ten years on the average, I'm sure the average around here (fairly dense-urban) is quite a bit lower. Neither food nor water is easy for them to find, intrepid creatures though they are. And road-kill raccoons are a common (and sad) sight.
This might be apocryphal, but a friend of a friend, years ago, rescued an orphaned baby raccoon and kept it as a pet. Apparently it could unscrew lids and open drawers and things, and they had to padlock absolutely everything in the house.
(BtP, I just played those sound clips for the cats here - one is now staring at the computer, purring hard, and the other has crept off to secure the perimeters.)
Now there's a wise kitty.
...And Munni, your tale of the perimeter-securing brings back memories of the one cat who, over our several decades of habitation here, was ever brave enough to face up to the resident raccoon gang. This was an enormous and majestic male Burmese, who though gentle enough with humans, could not resist the Call of the Wild in the Night--which inevitably brought him up against the raccoons. And it was a case of one against the Many.
One terrible encounter left him with his tail chewed off. As his "owners" ( busy "movie people") were otherwise occupied, Madame B, a great friend to animals, toted the poor mutilated fellow on foot to the vet in a box.
He recovered, but only, I'm afraid, to do battle again. Not long after, he disappeared from the Territories. It was never known for sure what became of him, but now and then in years after, when I bumped into one of the bold little goggle-eyed waddlers foraging around in the ivy by the front path under the redwood late at night, I often thought I could detect a special glint of triumph about the eyes, as if it was being signalled to me just who was boss of this neck of the woods.
Double-posted, BTP. That's two today, yours and Guitou's. The raccoons must have been at the software...
Sorry about that Zeph, I'm hanging my head and will be proceeding directly to the donjon...though wait, I believe I'm already in it.
For is not The Annexe the most lovely, Finlay-filled, raccoon-haunted donjon in the world?
O most lovely of punitive circumstances!
One recalls the pleasant civilized confinement of Leigh Hunt in Horsemonger Lane Prison, 1813-1815--during which LH's snug two-room incarceration-apartment became a bower papered with trellised roses under a Florentine-print-papered ceiling and furnished with bookcases (lined with the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, Milton), busts of his favorite poets (this would of course in our case be Zephirine), a piano, etc.
(And one remembers too that outside in the gaol yard, Hunt cultivated the flowers he loved--pansies, and trellised scarlet runners... garlands of which he picked to proffer upon visitors, perfumed with sweetbriar.. much as here at The Annexe we would have our little garden bedecked with the fragrant blooms of the Zephirine Drouhin Rose.)
And of course Leigh's brother John was in there too, not to mention occasional other congenial guests, so the company was fine.
And I will have the charming and refined Monsieur Guitou to share my own confinement--how much the better!
Nonsense, no confinement! Access to the Annexe is through wide double doors lined with Spanish leather, which stand open at all times.
Horsemonger Lane sounds good though - was he in for debt? better than Dickens's Marshalsea (the heat, the flies...)
Zeph--
No, Leigh and his brother were prosecuted for libel against the Prince Regent.
Zeph,
How could one have denied oneself for almost 48 hours the pleasure of knowing your foxes!
Brilliant site this. Now let's start by admitting a fox is perhaps less adorable to a human than is a raccoon.
But then there are some humans to whom neither a fox nor a raccoon is adorable. And anyway the purpose of a fox in life--or of a raccoon for that matter--is not to be adored but to exist and propagate itself. (Eureka! Science discovery moment of the week!)
The distress call of the fox in a thunderstorm: perfectly natural reaction to a disturbing electromagnetic situation. (As opposed to, say, popping open one's umbrella.)
Ritual fight between two vixens: relieved to know it's merely a ritual. (Now where have I seen this before?)
Fox in a cage: sad, sad. Anyone who'd hunt 'em should be hunted--or haunted.
The resident male Siamese here did NOT appreciate the shrieks of the vixens. (Whereas the raccoon chatter did not faze him--perhaps because he's used to hearing it in "real life".)
Fox cub photos: Awww! The one with nose under the pen--fourth row lower right--heartbreaker.
Adopt-a-fox week, then? (Foolish humans...)
This is an excellent book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Running-Fox-David-Macdonald/dp/0044400845/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233585638&sr=1-1
by a British fox expert who spent years observing wild foxes and had at least one living in his house. Apparently they're wonderful to live with in many ways but extremely destructive and love to chew everything, especially electrical wiring.
Foxes have au pairs. That's to say, a vixen with cubs will get a young vixen to move into the den and help her with hunting and cub-sitting.
Presumably if the au pair fox has a fling with the daddy fox it results in a very snarly fight...
Post a Comment