For years now I've been planning to put the raccoon stories together to create a book. I got a bit sidetracked the last few years, but discussing the overview of some of the stories here recently has reignited my passion for making the book.

I'm referring to the ones you posted here. Unfortunately I missed those on the other site, but do remember seeing your avatar. Amazing how those raccoons trusted you and interacted like they did.

DreamOfSpring said:Rosie,

Good to know that you did perceive it as a doll. It's not actually Scarlett nor anyone in particular, just an artist created doll or rather one of many copies of the original artist rendition.

Oh...but...she looks like she is thinking about that rascal Rhett!

ecnalg,

Regrettably, with just one slip of the finger, I lost my entire and somewhat lengthy post thanking you and then explaining the circumstances by which the Heidi stories began, the prequel if you will, and how the raccoons came to trust me. Argh! I was just about to 'send' the post, when it all went up in smoke. Now I'm in mourning over all those lost words. I'm afraid it will likely take me a while to find the energy to write them again.

For now I will just reiterate my thanks for your kind words by telling you that I had actually stopped telling the stories here, thinking perhaps people were bored with them. It's good to know otherwise, so thank you much for your compliment. The Heidi story, which had a pretty good following over 'there', particularly in the early and more productive years, was at its peak about a decade ago, and I was going by a different name then. Plus it ran in the Wildlife Forum. Perhaps one of these facts kept you from seeing it.

The raccoons didn't start out so comfortable around me, although even from the start Heidi did show a surprising ability to recognize that I wasn't really going to hurt her. Still gaining the full trust of the raccoons was a process which evolved over a period of years, with each level of trust won slowly and carefully. Also, for some strange reason animals in general are not afraid of me. I don't know why. Perhaps I just don't look very scary, especially now that I'm sort of 'broken down' by a back injury. So far, raccoons and opossums have come right up to my feet; a cat others in the neighborhood called 'that wild cat' let me hold her and pet her when she wouldn't let others close to her even if they fed her; and a tufted titmouse walked around on my head several times. I'll try to rewrite my Heidi prequel and other stories soon.

DOS, I thank you for your efforts and so sorry the computer had other plans for the message. That seemed to be more of a problem on that other site, at least for me. I was not over there 10 years ago.

The images from the stories you have shared here make me glad to see that you plan to publish them. The animals must sense something when around you. What an experience that must have been with the titmouse on your head.

My granddaughter works at a kennel when she is home from college and has such a love of animals. She wants to adopt an old dog once she has her own place, and is so excited that we're thinking of getting chickens this year.

I followed the Heidi Chronicles for a long time on DG. Loved them. I'm sure folks here would too. You are an animal whisperer, DOS.

Thank you, ecnalg,

Oh, I'm not blaming the site for my lost post. It was some bonehead thing I did which blew it all away. I was in the process of previewing and double checking things when I hit some key by mistake, not sure which key but obviously not something I was supposed to do at that time, and that's when it all went poof. It might even have been the 'return' key or tab or some other control type key, not sure, but it was definitely ME.

Having a wild bird walk around on your head is A-MA-ZING! But it's also not as easy as you might think. By that I mean that even once I understood the bird's intentions to land up there and despite the fact that I was eager for him/her to do so, I found it incredibly difficult to remain still and just let the bird land. When something 'dive bombs' you, swooping towards your head from an overhead limb and then, like a helicopter, hovers close to your head with wings flapping only inches above your ears, the urge to scream and flail your arms about is all but insurmountable. It's like some kind of deep-rooted and innate protective mechanism, something the brain has to work really hard to overcome.

I have pretty much decided to start a new thread specifically for stories. This one is quickly growing long anyhow and is more of a mixture of things. But for now I will share this tiny glimpse into the Heidi story, shared to demonstrate both Heidi's ability to discern friend from foe and also the extent to which [some] wild animals have judged me safe EVEN when I tried to show otherwise. But 1st a bit of preface is in order, so it at least makes sense.

Heidi and I didn't start out as friends at all. In fact, she was initially my nemesis and I hers. In fact, from the Heidi adventure I learned a huge lesson in the importance of perspective. You see, in the beginning I was very much enjoying feeding the birds, and my tiny cottage garden with it's multitude of flowering & fruiting plants plus it's all-you-can-eat stash of BOSS & hummer nectar was positively aflutter with all manner of birds, both common and rare alike. It was my little paradise on earth. That is, until the raccoon showed up...

The raccoon began a daily campaign of eating all of the BOSS she could hold & throwing the rest onto the ground below, often wrecking the feeder in the process. Then she would cap that off by guzzling the hummer nectar. This became a daily or rather nightly occurrence. Thus began the fight between me and Heidi, the fight for feeder rights. I spent my days dreaming of ways to block her access, and she spent her nights proving the inadequacy of my efforts. I didn't want to harm her, I just wanted to use my 'vastly superior' human intelligence to keep her safely at bay.

I hate to have to admit this, but Heidi was smarter than me. With the skill of the finest chess pro, she deftly blocked my every move, won every skirmish, and, above all, continued to gorge on my bird food daily. When I took the feeders in each night, I was sure I had won, but she merely came earlier in the afternoon. So I took them in earlier still - and she came even earlier in the day, until, finally, she was visiting the feeders before I even got home from work. Checkmate.

To insure I don't screw up and blow it away again, I'm going to post this and continue below. I'm not even going to preview or edit, so please don't mistake my typos for illiteracy.

(Continued from prior post)

One bright sunny Saturday morning in early spring I arose a bit late. It was probably around 10ish. I was sitting in the great room on the back of the house, having still not fully thrown off the haze of sleep, when suddenly out the window a medium sized brown dog caught my eye. Except...for a moment my still sleep-addled mind wrestled with the image...wasn't that 'dog' eating bird seed below the feeder? But dogs don't eat seeds. And the backyard was fenced! That was no dog! That was a raccoon out there eating seeds on a bright sunny morning in broad daylight!

Now I have always loved animals, all animals, since I was born. As a small child, I used to rescue moths that had gotten trapped in the house and take them back outside before my mom could kill them. Saving them was an important job for me back then. That's how much I loved all creatures. But to understand my reaction to the raccoon in my yard, you must understand that I grew up here in the south where rabies was (and is) at a fever pitch and where raccoons were thus completely off limits. As a very young child, when the teaching gets rooted deep in ones foundation, I was taught to never, ever have any contact with raccoons what so ever lest I should die. I was taught to fear them at the very core of my being so that their cuteness factor wouldn't become a vulnerability. They are mean and aggressive. They will rip you to shreds. They don't know any better, because they are wild. They will hurt you. And they carry rabies which is 100% deadly and for which there is no cure. Don't get near them. Don't even allow them in your yard, and, above all, do nothing to encourage them onto your property. It was a message I had absorbed completely and at an early an innocent age.

Seeing the raccoon in my yard in daytime, something I had been taught to view as a sign of rabies, my early training took over, and I leaped into action. Looking around for a 'weapon', I grabbed my broom and ran out onto the patio just maybe 30ft from where the raccoon was eating seeds. I ran out in such haste that I failed to even grab my shoes. Barefoot, holding my broom, I started jumping up and down, flailing my arms about, and yelling, "Get out of here, you! Go! Get!!!"

The raccoon raised its head, looked over at me, and then went back to eating seeds. NOW I was REALLY MAD. This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm a human. I'm supposed to be listened to. When I yell, wild animals are supposed to run away. How dare this raccoon just completely ignore me this way?! How dare 'he' stand over there eating while I was jumping around like an idiot waving my hands and yelling this way?! Had he not seen me? Did he not understand the rules? OH, THIS would not do! This raccoon had to go! I would win this battle.

So I yelled some more, jumped some more, flailed my arms and my broom around some more, but the raccoon continued to ignore me completely. That crazy raccoon had called my bluff. There I was standing in the yard in my bare feet and PJ's, jumping around like a complete idiot - and I live in the city, btw, with close neighbors who could probably see me out there jumping around like a gorilla (but likely couldn't see the raccoon over the privacy fence) - and the raccoon was ignoring me. Now what? I thought about running towards the raccoon while flailing and screaming, but I was barefoot and thus sequestered on the patio. It sure seemed I was loosing.

Determined not to loose this battle, I hurried back inside to find a better 'weapon'. I had no intention of actually harming the raccoon, of course, but I needed something to use to scare him - and fast. In my haste to find a 'weapon', I grabbed a couple soup cans from the pantry and ran back outside, this time with shoes. The raccoon was still out there munching on seeds. Again, I yelled and flailed about. I even ran a short distance towards him. I didn't dare get any closer though, since, as I've already mentioned, raccoons are viscous and dangerous animals. So I hurled a can of soup at him, well, not actually AT him but rather NEAR him. Except that since I'm a really bad shot and I didn't want to risk hitting him by mistake, I made sure to toss it well to one side of him, nonetheless certain this would certainly send him back into the forest for sure.

The can landed maybe two yards to one side of the raccoon. He looked up at me, lazily, and then in a move I could never have imagined, walked over, picked up the can, and looked it over as though thinking I had tossed him a gift...

The raccoon who was in my yard that Saturday morning and who had been 'fighting' me over the seeds for some time was not a 'he' at all. It was a 'she'. It was Heidi. That was, of course, before we became friends and before I named her. Even then she wasn't really afraid of me, not even when I lobbed soup cans in her direction and jumped around like a gorilla. No, she wasn't a tame, nor was she rabid. She just somehow knew that I wasn't really dangerous.

She had been hanging around my yard for a year or two, since the day I moved in probably. I had even seen her eyes watching me from behind shrubs in the darkness sometimes, like that night I went out to bury the watermelon rind so as to avoid luring animals to my yard. She had watched me dig the hole that night and watched me bury the rind. I had seen her eyes shining red in the darkness, reflecting light from the patio. Stealthily and from the darkness, she had been watching me for a while, and somehow she had correctly deduced that I was not a threat.

She did finally leave that Saturday morning, btw, but she left on her terms not mine and she left with dignity, walking to the forest not running. And she would most assuredly be back many, many more times...

Well, that's enough for now. Another day, and probably in a separate thread I'll explain more about my war with Heidi and how we eventually became the best of buddies. I'll post a link in this thread when I create the thread for the stories.

ecnalg: How wonderful that your granddaughter is smart enough to appreciate the benefit of an older dog. Many people fail to see that. From my own experience, having acquired an adult dog and also having raised one from a puppy, I can tell you that adult dogs are a much better fit for today's hurried lifestyles where no one is likely to be home to handle potty training and such. She sounds like a very bright young lady!

SongOfJoy: Thank you very, very much! In case it isn't totally obvious, I enjoy telling my animal stories and also enjoy reliving those magical days, so I'm thrilled to hear that there are folks here who may also enjoy reading them.

One last thing on the story above. These stories are 100% true. Throughout the story, formerly known as The Heidi Chronicles, I made a point to always convey to the reader exactly what I observed with 100% accuracy and never conceal anything. Even when the story took a dark turn when 1 of the raccoons was seriously and gravely injured, I continued to tell the story as it unfolded and exactly as I lived it and witnessed it. I did so even when valued and much beloved readers said they couldn't read anymore, because the story was at that point too sad, I still continued to always tell the story just as it occurred. That has always been important to me. This story is factual. It is not a work of fiction.

I realize how ludicrous it must sound that a wild raccoon stood in my backyard in daylight and failed to run away even when I yelled and jumped around and such. I realize that, because no one was more surprised than me. I felt incredibly powerless that day as I stood there giving it my best and yet finding myself unable to scare the raccoon away. But it happened exactly that way. There are many things in the Heidi story which I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams, and yet they happened. And I will always know, btw, that I was unbelievably lucky to have been chosen to witness, no, to live this story.

Heidi wasn't tame by any means. She would bolt and escape to the safety of the forest in an instant at the very sound of a human voice anywhere in the distance. The only sense I've ever been able to make of her complete unwillingness to be chased off by me even when I TRIED to scare her is that this. I figure living on the fringes of the city as she did, Heidi had likely encountered people before. My guess is she had seen angry people and people who were truly trying to harm her. My guess is she could, as a result, see the difference and thus tell that I lacked either the desire or the ability to harm her and so was not a real threat.

The incident above, incredible as it may sound, is not even the most outrageous event of its kind in the course of this story...

What a start to the interactions you, Heidi and her offspring shared. I was wondering if she was going to pull the pull-tab on the can of soup you threw at her, LOL. I'll look forward to reading more when you are able to find time. That was a lot of effort today, but most appreciated. So nice that it is just as it took place with no prettying up.

We are out in the woods and I bring in the bird-feeding supplies each evening. Our local raccoons were highly offended by a floating planter that we installed in our 4-foot pond. We came out the next day to find it totally dismantled, the foam part shredded and the other pieces torn apart.

As an aside, I tend to feel that I should not be reading your posts when I'm dressed in my sweats, with you looking so elegant.

ecnalg,

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. Hold on to your seat though, because it gets worse before it gets better. :-)

As to me looking so elegant,
you do know that's a porcelain doll, right?
Glad you can't see what I'm really wearing right now. I need a bath, and my outfit would probably make your sweats look down right elegant!!!

Oh, I hope you didn't put the floating feeder in the water to keep it away from the raccoons. LOL. Raccoons love water. For years, I kept (and cleaned and refilled weekly) a kiddie pool for them back by the 'buffet'. They spent as much time in the pool as they did eating. They totally loved that little pool, although they eyed it with enormous suspicion the day it 1st showed up. I/we also got a lot of joy out of watching them play in the pool.

A friend of mine tells me periodically about a camping experience in which he and his buddies tied there food up high suspended by a rope thinking that would make it inaccessible to raccoons. Of course, they awoke the next morning to find little more than wrappers left. They believed the raccoons had teamed up standing on each others shoulders to reach the treasure, but I have no doubt the raccoons merely climbed the ropes. Raccoons can even climb relatively thin branches while hanging upside down from them, so ropes should be no problem. The are aerial acrobats and Olympic class swimmers.

I have only heard of 1 way to keep raccoons away from a feeder. If interested, google "raccoons can't jump". You should be able to find it that way. If not, PLMK, and I'll look for it or describe it if I can't find it.

Yes, I know it is a picture of a china doll, but still, I picture you as an elegant lady like the doll. The floating planter had a fern in it, not bird food, so we were not expecting it to be attacked. It was floating to be decorative, not as a way of evading the critters. They frequently disrupt the rocks around the pond and no doubt take some of the frogs, but this planter attack was a surprise.

I had no idea they were not jumpers, but was aware that they were skilled climbers and adept at undoing things. Your poor camper friend.

ecnalg,

Oh, yeah, that's me. Elegant. That's even one of my outfits she is wearing in the photo - it's a 4ft doll. But, just something I wear when I don't care how I look, you understand. (a line I plagiarized from the movie It's a Wonderful Life, btw) Isn't it interesting though how we form our own sort of fill-in-the-blanks images of online friends?

For some reason I was thinking maybe you had used the floating planter as a bird feeder and that was why they dismantled it. Strange that they went to such trouble to destroy a fern - unless by some chance it had a worm or grub or something like that in the soil. Worms in particular, will often climb into a pot if it is left sitting on the ground or even on concrete. The raccoons shredded my cucumber plants 2 summers ago while trying to dig up worms which had been attracted by the compost - little menaces. The raccoons, not the worms :-)

Apparently, the inability to jump (jump up, that is) is their Achilles heel. They supposedly can't even jump like 1.5-2ft high. The link I mentioned was for a site where a guy built a feeder for his cat based on the idea that raccoons can't jump, and as we all know, cats can. He built a sheet metal baffle (curved downward) around the pole so they couldn't climb it to reach the platform, and since they also couldn't jump up, they were completely unable to steal the cat's food. Ingenious idea.

About that soup can, I forgot to clarify. No pop top, but maybe that's what Heidi was looking for when she picked the can up and turned it around in her hands the way she did.

I started a raccoon blog years ago, but my heart wasn't really in it at the time. I was way too busy at work back then, and the Heidi story was winding down anyhow sort of like happens with a long running TV show. I never got past Page 1 of the blog, but I did post some photos on it. I was wondering. Can I post the link here so you guys can see the photos, or would that violate policy? Again, it's only a 1 page blog, that's 1 page after 5 or 6 years, lol, so not something I'm trying to publicize or drive traffic to. Just that it does have a few of my favorite pics - pics that will take me ages to find if I have to drag the old, outdated, backup drive out and look for them.

Of course you can post a link to your blog here. In fact, you can also have a permanent link to your blog in your signature line if you wish.

zuzu,

Thank you very much for your response. I should have been more specific in that it's not an ATP blog. It's one of those google blogs, can't recall the name right now. Is that still ok?

(I hope I can still find it. I deserted it years ago.)

I understood that it's not an ATP blog. Yes, you most definitely can give us a link to your blog. I also hope you can find it.

Thank you, zuzu!

Just wanted to be sure.