Wild Life Alert

When we see the dog stand up suddenly from the porch with his eyes focused intently across the pasture, we know it is far more likely we have four-legged than two-legged visitors–usually deer–and at times, he won’t even bother to challenge them.But when we see the dog stand up suddenly and look straight up into the maple tree just beyond the mailbox, our guests are certainly not deer.

While our arboreal drop-ins are most usually squirrels or chipmunks, this time we looked out the window just as Tsuga was about to get a mouthful of raccoon tail.

And here is where our marital dimorphism (a subject for later this week) cut in: she grabbed the rifle, I grabbed the camera.

“It might be rabid!” she warned.

“He seems healthy enough to me” I hollered back, as I chased the uncooperative bandit back and forth from one side of the crotch of the tree to the other. “Hold still and smile” I pleaded.

Finally, he tired of our game, and backed down the tree, down into and along side of Goose Creek, minding his own business, and disappeared.