ecnalg,

Not saying it doesn't happen, but I've honestly never seen that side of raccoons. I saw them have lots of brief spats with each other, characterized by a lot of noisy posturing and maybe a quick slap or two like guys acting macho when they don't really want to fight. Bickering with each other seems almost to be something of a sport with them, but from what I've seen it's all posturing and pretense, no real violence. I've never seen a single raccoon emerge with so much as a scratch, much less any blood spilled. It's just their way of arguing to settle disputes, but it can be quite comical to observe.

Not saying it can't happen, but I have never seen a raccoon express anything along the lines of rage or even anger. In all the years I was hanging out with them and observing them, I never saw any destructive behavior at all, so I can't really imagine why they would have destroyed your hanging planter that way.

Kits are playful - much like kittens. Just as with a litter of kittens, I'm guessing a bunch of kits can probably do some damage while playing. They did sort of wreck my patio a time or two. From the aftermath, it looked as though they had stood atop the outdoor baker's rack and just thrown everything from the shelves onto the patio floor below like a bunch of drunken, partying college kids. The patio was littered with lots of broken pottery and spilled dirt the next morning. They even managed to toss the globe from the outdoor light onto the patio floor. In reality, I'm guessing they were just up there on the baker's rack playing, and things just happened to fall, probably due to all the little kits up there bumping into things. And, who knows, once the 1st item fell, they may have found the sights and sounds so interesting that they threw a few more down just to watch them shatter.

Kits and very young raccoons are innately inquisitive about everything, and they particularly enjoy touching things. They enjoy the tactile sensation of things. Watching them up close, it's almost like observing a blind person reading braille. When they encounter anything new, like plush toys or the feel of the plastic pool bottom under water, they will spend a lot of time just 'reading' it with their long and extremely dexterous 'fingers' as though to learn all of its secrets and to insure they will remember it next time.

Another characteristic of kits and very young raccoons is that they remind me very much of fidgety people like my brother who absolute must 'play' with everything around them, picking up things from your desk or from end tables and mindlessly turning and twisting those things endlessly as they talk to you and doing this to the extent that you are certain they will end up breaking something before it is over. You either spend the entire time holding your breath for fear they will wring the arms and legs off some treasured ornament, or you spend the whole conversation repeatedly taking things from them or safe keeping - and if you are smart giving them something less valuable to fidget with. If you have ever known one of those people, they you know the basic behavior of kits and young raccoons. They aren't trying to break things. They just have to fidget with everything constantly, and sometimes that results in breakage.

Raccoons remain playful up until age 1 when they have their 1st litter. That seems to settle them down considerably. Beyond age 1, raccoons tend to be rather lazy, kind of like humans. Mature raccoons usually don't expend any more energy than absolutely necessary to locate food, eat it, and get back to there tree to resume their nap. Contrary to popular myths about raccoons as vicious fighters, they are the Kissingers of the animal world, and will go to great lengths to avoid conflict (except for their noisy but mostly fake spats with each other, that is). Unless absolutely necessary to defend themselves or their progeny, they don't waste energy on things like fighting. I have this mental image of them sacked out in their respective trees with a beer and a pizza or maybe some bon bons, watching TV in something comfy, probably with the top button undone.

Although I do tend to have a good memory - or did before Father Time stepped in, that is - the fluket thing just happens to be one of a relatively small number of incidents from that time frame that made enough of an impression on me to stick with me all these years. I'm guessing you probably have a few such childhood memories, too.

Great lesson on raccoons. I'd love to see the kits playing, but not see my stuff come crashing down, lol!

DOS,

You certainly know their habits far better than I do, and very likely it was curiosity that prompted what ended up as damage. They may have been investigating these floating plants in "their" pond, and pulling everything apart to more closely check things out.

I don't attribute paper shredding and other behaviors by our kittens as anger, but in our shock at seeing the plant and the planter components demolished, that was our take on things. Thank you for giving us a better understanding.

DreamOfSpring said:About the missing Emoji, I think I've figured it out. My MacBook laptop is 3-4yrs old now. The version of OsX it is running is outdated. Until now I've never run across a problem, but this looks like the 1st sign of things like the Emoji which are beyond my outdated OS.

Although Apple has repeatedly offered me free upgrades, to date I've not accepted any of them. My reason? Mostly Steve Jobs or rather the lack thereof. My OS officially became obsolete, prompting Apple to offer me updates to newer versions, about the same time that Steve Jobs left the company. I liked the innovative atmosphere he brought to Apple. His death left me concerned about whether subsequent products would continue to have the same qualities. I've held off on upgrades for fear of loosing the features I love about my Mac and, instead, ending up with something more like Windows.

When El Capitan came out, I gave some thought to upgrading, but decided against it after reading that while some people love it many others are having major problems with it, and the dividing line between the happy people and the sad people seems to be memory. It needs a LOT of memory, and although it claims to work on the amount of memory I have, based on user reviews it only seems to work well on computers with more memory. Plus, and I'm really glad I read this before upgrading, once you upgrade to El Capitan, you can't easily remove the upgrade and go back to your old version. Some of your files, photos, etc get updated to fit the new OS, and can't be accessed again if you drop back to a lower version. Argh!

So this is why I'm still using the older OS and apparently why I'm not able to view those Emoji characters.

Rosie, what kind of device are you using? Just curious.

An iPad air. 2-3 years old. The emoji is just one of the 'font' options on the keyboard...been there forever on iPad

It's nice that some people can appreciate raccoons. Here they are filthy and horribly destructive. They get in the haymows of barns and crap all over the hay. They will go along the bottoms of those long white silobags where farmers keep feed and tear holes in the plastic; then will climb up on the top of the bags and tear holes there. Never mind that there is a 9 foot opening at one end where they can, essentially, self-feed. The holes they make have to be taped up with special tape or the air that gets in the holes will spoil the feed for the cattle. We have spent literally hours cleaning up the messes they make.

I have to put my barn cat food in pails that I hang by chains from a pipe hanging across the barn so they can't get into it. They can decimate a 50 pound bag of cat food in a night.

Yes, there are two sides to raccoons. We don't leave any cat food out after dark.

I never said they were little angels.
I will return to address this theme more later.

Thanks for the info, MissingRosie,

My laptop is now behind by some 4-5 different versions of OsX, so I still suspect it just doesn't know anything about those Emoji keys on your iPad. Oh, well. It was bound to happen eventually.

Last night I made some special, meaty dog biscuits for Widget. It had been a while since I made him any. I usually try to make them often enough to keep him supplied with treats. I had some meat in the freezer I was saving for this, and I figured I should hurry and get them made now while the temp is back down in the 70s, however briefly.

I usually make his treats from chicken carcasses and such saved from my meals. This time, however, I had some lean pork roast set aside for that purpose. When I originally cooked the roast, I ate it for days, but for some reason didn't finish it all. The remains ended up staying in the fridge a day or 2 longer than I was comfortable with, so that's how it got diverted to Widget. I think it was in the fridge for 5-6 days instead of 3. It was probably fine, but I just didn't want to chance it.

To test that it was ok for him, I let Widget sample a very tiny sliver. Dogs have incredibly powerful sense of smell. Compared to them we are virtually 'blind' to smells. If food has gone bad, dogs can usually tell, so I wanted to get his opinion. He gobble it up and wanted more. Then with the meat in the freezer and Widget having only consumed that tiny sliver, I waited a few days to see if he showed any signs of tummy upset. Finally, all having gone well, I chopped about 1/2 the meat up very fine, mixed it in with my usual batter, and baked it into small dog treats. After baking, I let them sit in the hot over overnight to dry thoroughly, since that makes them keep better.

Widget gave them 2 paws up. These are over 50% pure, lean meat. You can actually see the tiny shreds of meat in them. I kept a few out for now and put the rest in the freezer to better insure safe keeping given that they don't have any preservatives. I still need to bake treats using the other 1/2 of that meat and make some more using the chicken carcass I've been saving. It's nice and chilly tonight, so I'm trying to talk myself into making a batch. I need to get them all baked and in the freezer before it gets too hot around here to use the oven.

Widget is a lucky boy! I think I could eat one myself

Trust me, BillyPorter,

You REALLY don't want to do that. :smily:

I tasted them once totally by accident, and I thought I would NEVER get that awful taste out of my mouth. Bleh! Yuck! Puey!
Widget loves them, but, seriously, they were NASTY.

It happened one night about 2yrs ago. I was going through a period where I just could not sleep at night, so I took 1/2 of an Ambien to try to get my sleep cycle back on track. Widget sleeps in/on a puff ball type doggie bed on the opposite bottom corner of my bed. Widget is a Maltese, just 5lbs, so a tiny fella who doesn't take up much space. I usually keep a ziploc bag with a few of Widget's treats in a drawer in the nightstand, but that night for some reason I left the zip bag on bed, on the side I don't use.

The Ambien put me to sleep right away, but after a few hours I awoke, well, kind of. I was in this sort of groggy state somewhere between wake and sleep. I opened my eyes, saw the 'cookies' on the other side of the bed, and thought, "Yum!" Completely oblivious to the facts concerning their true identity, I was just thrilled to find that I had cookies. I sat up in bed, grabbed a cookie, took a bite, started chewing, and eeeewww!!! That really woke me up, because they were SO nasty. I spit that bite out, but it took a day or so to get that taste out of my mouth, and weeks to get it out of my head. (I make sure to keep his treats in the drawer now.)

Dream,
LOL!! No, no animal treats for me regardless of what's in them!
THAT is hilarious! I'll admit to tasting dry cat and dog food and dog treats as a kid and yep, not good.

I don't think standard dog biscuits taste bad, just very very dry. Don't ask me how I know!

Stillwood,
Can we ask how old you were when you discovered this fact?

We ate the tiny milk one as kids...but I don't know why.... We didn't have a dog. But I remember chewing on those and not bad...not good...but not bad. Our corsages ..12 years?? Had 12 milk bones. Do you remember those corsages? Bazooka bubble gum, gum drops, sugar cubes for 16th..(that was the final year too) Lifesavers, I don't think Hershey's had kisses then... Lots of chiffon and my favorite had a bumble bee in it. Thinking about this brings back all those crazy kid memories..fudge pops, OJ pops, Chuckles jellies, O'Henry, Clark bars, candy lipstick..those little " records" with the red hot cinnamon in the center..made from wound black licorice string...

I may start a thread about old candy and toys... I miss my Saucy Walker for sure....

Oooh Rosie,
It would be fun to reminisce about candy!

I will do it

I would eat it. LOL

I can't tell you how a Butterfingers and Clark Bar figures inmy memories..
Mom and dad both alive...watching Ed Sullivan or Rawhide ..mom would give each of us a WHOLE candy bar.. And back then those were big! The chocolate was actually creamy not all sugar grainy as it is now and would melt on the fingers.

And Chuckles...rectangular sugared jellies...like a gumdrop I guess....bright green, yellow, red, orange....black?? I can't remember...I DO remember that I did NOT like the green but nobody would trade.

And maltrd balls....
And Bonamo Turkish Taffy......get it all "spitted up". and it would. S t r e t c h
Mom would freeze it and SLAP it on the counter and we would all get a shard.