The dog bark in the evening now and then which does not bother us. Occasionally, they get downright noisy and sometimes it is late at night. One of our neighbors said they were going to call us in the middle of the night when the dogs were barking. I let the neighbor know that the dogs are barking at animals beyond their control. If the animal was within their control we would know about it the next morning.
For example, our neighborhood is less two opossums because they acquired the ambient temperature of the morning air and were not playing opossum. Another example is one night the dogs were barking outside our window. I looked out to see what they were barking at. It was something in the front yard. I made my way out front, looked around the corner of the house and saw the tail of a skunk. The dogs and the skunk were in a standoff facing each other and I was at the business end of the skunk. I thought to myself that I was not going to change the course of history so I went back inside and luckily the skunk wandered off the other direction.
Then there are the raccoons. A couple of years ago there was a mother raccoon and three babies wandering around the neighborhood. They live in the neighbor’s backyard. I have seen them on the roof of the neighbor’s garage and house. Mama raccoon is too big for any trap that I have. I tried to trap the youthful offenders with no luck. Now that time has passed, we have more baby raccoons in the neighborhood.
Scott reported a few nights ago that mama and the babies were outside his window in the tree. He was not the only one that was looking at the raccoons. The two dogs were sitting below the tree waiting for some action. My thought was, just what we need, more baby raccoons next door.
So back to the beginning, when the neighbor complained about the dogs barking, I asked if the neighbor was going to do something about the raccoons in their yard, the very raccoons that the dogs bark at. Hence, the barking heard at 7:00 am this morning. I looked out the window and I could see mama raccoon trying to walk past the neighbor’s house, safely behind the chain link fence separating the two yards. Mama coon would walk out, the dogs would bark, the fence would rattle, mama would fluff up and show her teeth, the dogs would really bark and mama would retreat. This was repeated a few times.
During this barking ballad I did pick up a strange noise that was coming from closer to the front yard so I investigated. Lo and behold there was a baby raccoon treed in a yucca plant about seven feet up. I moved the dogs further in the back yard as to let mama rescue her young one. We must protect the little ones, even if in the future the dogs will continue to bark and it very well could be a “teenage” raccoon causing problems.
Baby racoon "treed" in a yucca plant
