Ringed Bandits Who Steal

A backyard without wildlife is like an aquarium with no fish. Wildlife makes any backyard more complete. Photo by Peter Sporring

I can’t help but feel sorry for folks like the ones I wrote about in a recent Picton Gazette column, who are so pristine and Gawdawful perfect in their lifestyle that they consider all manner of wildlife to be the enemy. They should instead be living on the top floor of a condominium, high above it all where the only wildlife they need to contend with are flies. Down here in the real world, all wildlife species are welcome at our home, even the bees at my feeders and the moths on my door. Especially the raccoons. I first learned about the dexterous fingers of raccoons when a young family of them used to visit us nightly on our sundeck. We enjoyed having them stop by and often I would leave scraps on the deck to ensure their return another night. Gradually, they became accustomed to me stepping out onto the deck to watch them eat in the dim light of the moon. As they were finishing up my offerings one evening, I opened the door just a crack and held a crust of bread just inside the door. Ever so slowly a pair of furry hands reached in through the crack and ever so delicately clasped the crust and pulled it outside onto the deck where it was promptly shared and consumed by the party of four visitors. Two of my bird feeders in a previous setup hung from a wire strung between two trees. This wire also contained a string of patio lights and a set of wind chimes. One calm night I awoke to the sound of wind chimes vigorously chiming away, and realizing there was no wind to activate them, I turned on our 500-watt flood light. There illuminated at the end of a tree limb was a raccoon vigorously shaking the wire which it continued to do in the now full flood of light until the feeders, one by one, dropped to the ground. Mission accomplished, it then casually retreated back along the limb, lowered itself down the trunk of the maple, and proceeded to eat the sunflower seeds, now liberally spilled upon the ground. Some say we should not feed wild animals. But those who tell us not to, are often the same people who feed birds (a million dollar industry), feed ducks prior to the waterfowl hunt, or feed deer, or plant fruit bearing shrubs to attract wildlife to their back yards. If there is a law, or a policy, then it is surely being created and subsequently manipulated according to the whims of those who practice it. Until I see a policy in place that applies to everyone, I will continue to look forward to the ringing of my wind chimes, the overturned flower pots on the sundeck, and the lid removed from my compost bin. And I will not hesitate to hand a raccoon a piece of bread, should its paws ever slip through our kitchen door again. People in synthetic routines are missing all that.