It's Always Something Around Here....

Our dogs are excellent at doing their job.......which is to patrol our remote section of the mountain and keep us safe from predators.........the two or four-legged kind. Over the past six-plus years, they have run off numerous suspicious people in suspicious vehicles, and chased countless bear, bob cats, wild boar, deer, lamas, snakes, and others back into the woods where they belong and away from our (their) home. This also allows me to walk around on the mountainside accompanied by my large guardians and feel very safe.

But sometimes, as was the case early this morning, they don't discriminate between actual predators and the more innocent creatures that should be allowed to cohabitate peacefully within their boundaries. They see movement, especially in the dark, and go to work.

About 3:00AM this morning, they decided this enormous raccoon shouldn't be trespassing and chased him about 50 feet up a tree. To make certain he didn't come down, they sat vigil ALL NIGHT, barking. I can only imagine how terrified this little guy must have been.

At daylight, I was able to go into the woods to see what all the noise was about. This guy was curled into a ball so all I could see was fur and because he is so big, initially, I thought it might be a baby bear cub. Of course, my next thought was "Where's the mom???". But after I secured the dogs and he felt a little safer to uncurl from his defensive position, I could see through the lense of my camera that he was the beautiful, very large raccoon pictured below.

Once the barking stopped, with the dogs secured elsewhere, he was able to escape the treetops and relocate to a safer part of the mountain. I wish him a safe journey.

So......this is how my day began.



From a distance, he looks like a little bear cub in this photo above because I couldn't see the rings on his tail or the "bandit" eyes as I could inn the photo below.