Raccoons are Special

Raccoons are very special. Let’s face it raccoons are just neat, their cool! I bet most people have seen them on a television show before. There seems to be a lot of nature shows out there any more.

We had some very special raccoons, because they lived in our back yard. Yes, that’s what I said, our very own back yard.

High in the mountains of Conifer Colorado, we called home, along with the raccoons. I guess you would have to call that special, because in my life time I never thought we would be out on our back deck visiting with raccoons.

Our deck was on the second level of our house leading into the living room. The side near the deck had a half dozen big, big picture windows all the way across the room.

This gave you a clear view of any critters (as we called them) roaming around on our deck. The raccoons would crawl up the posts from the lower deck to our top deck, of course looking for food and water.

We always kept a water dish in the corner and did feed the birds. So the raccoons would help themselves to both.

The thing about a wooden deck is you can hear every kind of sound or thump and be alerted instantly that you had a critter on that back deck.

Seems like it was Cindy that we met first, or named first. Cindy was pretty much a loaner. Kept more to her self than some of the other raccoons.

We soon learned that Cindy had a cranky personality. We couldn’t resist handing out treats of marsh mellows. Raccoons just loved them. If Cindy didn’t get her marsh mellows fast enough she would run over and bite your shoes.

Here and there, we would see some big males and they occasionally would come on the deck too.

Next, who should come along but a beautiful gentle female raccoon. We named her Sheila. She had a very sweet gentle personality. I think she adopted us. She seemed to really like our company.

Late one night just about dark we heard some thumping sounds, and turned on the porch light to see our Sheila. Then we heard some little sounds and looked over in the covered bird feeder that was attached to the top rail of the deck.

There in that bird feeder were 5 adorable, baby, baby raccoons! Yep, just about the cutest little things you could every see, right in our back yard.

We weren’t sure how Sheila would react to our being on the deck with her and her babies. Eventually we went out on the deck with all of them and Sheila made no protest or negative response. I guess Sheila had sized us up and decided we weren’t a threat.

One night Paul, my husband was sitting out on the deck in one of the patio chairs and Sheila came up with her brood of five. By now the babies were very curious about us.

Before he knew it, Paul had five baby raccoons crawling all over him. They were on his lap, his shoulders and even his head. We just laughed and laughed! I would never have thought that they would be so trusting.

We visited with our raccoon friends for quite some time. Eventually they moved on. Don’t know why for sure, we started into drought conditions and between lack of water and food, they probably had to go some where else.

We have been so fortunate to experience the beautiful mountain wild life in Conifer. Makes me home sick, but we had to move on too.

Filed under Wild Life | Tags: baby raccoons, raccoons, Wild Life | Comment (0)