In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 179 of 1154
Got some stuff to get ready for donation tomorrow.
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Been battling some sort of infection; it started with a crackling/popping left ear. the after a week the left side of my throat got sore. The my WHOLE throat got sore ... and I mean REALLY sore, like strep-throat sore. Then I lost my voice and developed a cough. After two weeks I threw in the towel and saw a doctor, and just started a short course of antibiotics. I hope I feel better soon because I feel terrible!
But I discovered that the old cures work. Honey ... works at least as well as ibuprofen, and the two work pretty well together.
I think tommorrow I'm going to try the old peasant's trick: Honey (kills germs) and some sort of hard liquor (kills germs), lemon juice (vita C) and hot water. If it doesn't help at least I won't be focusing on the pain so much.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Bright sunny day here. Out in a bit.
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Donation made and I found a copy of "Gladiator" there. So I bought it. 
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Gladiator. That's one sexy ass. 
Racoon Confirmed! :)
Learned a bit about my house today too. Would have learned more but, yanno, there's a racoon living up there now....
My suspicions that she found her way up there after I exposed stuff with the porch were confirmed too. I was on the phone with my brother when I said quietly into the phone after going out to the porch for a smoke "shhhh! you hear that!". My brother could hear her crawling on the ceiling above me too. I must have walked out right while she was in the middle of doing something because that is about 15 to 20 feet east of where I'd usually find her in the walls of the house proper.
She was panicing too, hearing me talking loudly right below her.
My brother reminded me of a door that I hadn't even thought about in the attic for years in a room that had boxes in front of it. It's just a 2'x 2' wooden thing leading out onto the porch roof. I went up to it (thinking in my mind that it was just a tiny piece of wood, but thankfully it was at least 1" thick and it's VERY hard to open inward to the house over the carpet installed there. If she ever tried getting into it, she wouldn't ever have been able to force it open. It doesn't have a knob, and I had to get a flathead screwdriver to pry it open just an inch and shine a flashlight in there.
Back and forth the light went. For a few minutes at least...
Then I saw the shine. Those beady little eyes reflecting the light back at me. She must not have noticed right away that I was looking right at her because when she did, she ducked her head behind some insulation. The entire time I was going through this process with the door she didn't make a single sound.
Once she hid, I began barking and being as loud as I could. Banging on the wall and scratching it. She didn't make a sound. I would have started slamming the door a bunch of times, but like I said the thing can barely be opened.
I've never looked up there before. I guess I always assumed that was closed off from the porch roof, but it might be wide open into the house. Either that, or she gnawed her way in there. If she actually did that, then I guess I'll consider myself lucky that's where she gnawed in instead of the finished inside of the attic.
I haven't heard a peep out of her since then. I'd imagine she's pretty terrified right now.
I've got a boom box in the garage. During the middle of the day while she's most likely to be out foraging if she hasn't left for good, I'm going to put on a rediculous amount of clothing and figure out a way to protect my head, just so I don't get bit in case she is still up there, and I'm going to put the radio right in there and turn it up twice as loud as the alarm clock that's been keeping her quiet from outside of her dwelling.
I've got to admit, she was really cute the way she had her head poked out and quickly hid it when she realized that I was looking right at her. I almost feel bad having to evict her. Hopefully she makes this easy and painless.
Then I have to find a way to make sure another one doesn't try the same thing once she gets the message.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Gladiator. That's one sexy ass.
Racoon Confirmed! :)
Learned a bit about my house today too. Would have learned more but, yanno, there's a racoon living up there now....
My suspicions that she found her way up there after I exposed stuff with the porch were confirmed too. I was on the phone with my brother when I said quietly into the phone after going out to the porch for a smoke "shhhh! you hear that!". My brother could hear her crawling on the ceiling above me too. I must have walked out right while she was in the middle of doing something because that is about 15 to 20 feet east of where I'd usually find her in the walls of the house proper.
She was panicing too, hearing me talking loudly right below her.
My brother reminded me of a door that I hadn't even thought about in the attic for years in a room that had boxes in front of it. It's just a 2'x 2' wooden thing leading out onto the porch roof. I went up to it (thinking in my mind that it was just a tiny piece of wood, but thankfully it was at least 1" thick and it's VERY hard to open inward to the house over the carpet installed there. If she ever tried getting into it, she wouldn't ever have been able to force it open. It doesn't have a knob, and I had to get a flathead screwdriver to pry it open just an inch and shine a flashlight in there.
Back and forth the light went. For a few minutes at least...
Then I saw the shine. Those beady little eyes reflecting the light back at me. She must not have noticed right away that I was looking right at her because when she did, she ducked her head behind some insulation. The entire time I was going through this process with the door she didn't make a single sound.
Once she hid, I began barking and being as loud as I could. Banging on the wall and scratching it. She didn't make a sound. I would have started slamming the door a bunch of times, but like I said the thing can barely be opened.
I've never looked up there before. I guess I always assumed that was closed off from the porch roof, but it might be wide open into the house. Either that, or she gnawed her way in there. If she actually did that, then I guess I'll consider myself lucky that's where she gnawed in instead of the finished inside of the attic.
I haven't heard a peep out of her since then. I'd imagine she's pretty terrified right now.
I've got a boom box in the garage. During the middle of the day while she's most likely to be out foraging if she hasn't left for good, I'm going to put on a rediculous amount of clothing and figure out a way to protect my head, just so I don't get bit in case she is still up there, and I'm going to put the radio right in there and turn it up twice as loud as the alarm clock that's been keeping her quiet from outside of her dwelling.
I've got to admit, she was really cute the way she had her head poked out and quickly hid it when she realized that I was looking right at her. I almost feel bad having to evict her. Hopefully she makes this easy and painless.
Then I have to find a way to make sure another one doesn't try the same thing once she gets the message.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
That it is.
I knew people that had a raccoon living under the front stairs of their house and while she and I think she had babies, were out the man boarded up all the holes under the stairs so they couldn't get back in.
That is all you can do is board everything up Jack to keep her out and from maybe having a family in your attic.
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I used to think that raccoons were cute until I was faced down by one that I truly think might have been rabid.
They're destructive and aggressive critters and - worse- they commonly carry two parasites that can be spread to people. One is the common roundworm, the other can wind up eating your brain
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/baylisascaris/index.html
While infection is rare, if you wind up cleaning up the area, wear gloves and an N95 mask.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
That it is.
I knew people that had a raccoon living under the front stairs of their house and while she and I think she had babies, were out the man boarded up all the holes under the stairs so they couldn't get back in.
That is all you can do is board everything up Jack to keep her out and from maybe having a family in your attic.
It's almost sure that there are already babies up there. It doesn't sound like racoons are likely to take up residence in an attic for other reasons and it should always assume there is a litter involved.
Here's the website I had found the first night that I suspected it was a racoon. It's up by you Brenda :)
https://www.torontowildlifecentre.com/wildlife-emergency-rescue-hotlin
e/conflicts-with-wildlife/common-raccoon-problems/raccoons-living-in-attic/
Unless your neighbor is sure that the babies were out with the mother, he may have separated them. Chances are that he didn't though because she would have come back and tried destroying everything to get back to them.
Quote:
What to do if a raccoon is living in the attic
Be patient with a mother raccoon in the attic
Your first option is to do nothing at all. Raccoons typically live in attic dens for short periods. Raccoon babies are independent by the end of summer, when they leave the den and disperse from their family groups. Raccoon mothers commonly move their babies between den sites during the nesting season, so she may leave on her own. If you wait until the babies are grown and/or have left, then you can close off the access point to prevent other raccoons from using the attic as a den in the future.
Trapping and relocating a raccoon might seem like the “humane” option, but it isn’t. Relocated raccoons don’t tend to survive when they’re moved off of their home territory. Relocated mother raccoons leave behind babies who will die without a mother to care for them. A mother raccoon relocated with her babies will be so frightened she will abandon them when faced with a new, unknown territory. In Ontario, it is illegal to relocate any wild animal more than 1km from where it was found.
Once I am pretty damn sure that they're out for good, I need to at least board up however they got into the house proper. If I'm not tearing down the porch, it doesn't have to be a pretty solution. If I do tear it down, it will end up being covered in new plywood and that entire side of the house will have new siding put up.
Unfortunately, there's no real way of keeping them out of the porch now that demo had started. The "paper test" mentioned on the website will not work. There are literal cubic feet of entry access into the porch now.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I used to think that raccoons were cute until I was faced down by one that I truly think might have been rabid.
They're destructive and aggressive critters and - worse- they commonly carry two parasites that can be spread to people. One is the common roundworm, the other can wind up eating your brain
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/baylisascaris/index.html
While infection is rare, if you wind up cleaning up the area, wear gloves and an N95 mask.
I don't take anything for granted, and I'm not going to take any chances, but I seriously doubt that this racoon is rabid. That's not to say at all that it isn't carrying the disease which can take months and even sometimes years to reach the point where there are visible clinical signs, at which point the animal will die within 5 to 10 days. The animal can only spread the rabies virus when the clinical signs onset.
Those parasites though... Yeah. I read about them. They kind of scare the shit out of me.
I'm going to have to go up there at some point and figure out a way from keeping any more from getting in until I solve the porch dilemma. Since nothing smells up there, I might not be too keen on trying to clean anything up thoug
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JACK, I'm fairly certain that they saw all of them leave the property before the man began boarding up everything. These people wouldn't have wanted an angry mama around their house.
We have lots of wild critters up here that are city residents. Coons, coyotes, bears come down out of the mountains to forage. Especially on the North Shore which is another section of Vancouver. These are usually black bears but they scare people and can be dangerous if they think they are being provoked.
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