It's been a while...

Local Beasts

Below are a few beastly bits that I have encountered in the yard this summer:

You never really hear about the early worm...

This fella was in the front yard when I got home from work one day...

Not sure if this is the same bunny rabbit...
but it was in the back yard one Sunday morning...

This little rascal was one of three moving freely
in the back yard along the fence and near the pool...

When you get this close, you should make sure
that you have all of your shots in order...

I found this leggy super model in my bathroom a few weeks ago...
I let it go outside...so it's probably back in the bathroom...

Which leads me to what happened this morning:

I've been emptying the pool skimmer before work these days due to the higher volume of leaves lately. As I was walking over, I was thinking to myself that I haven't really encountered anything too weird in the skimmer...I was thinking like a mouse or something like that...So I got down there and took the lid off and pulled the skimmer part out...Then I reached for the trap or basket cylinder part...It's harder to pull out because it's so full of leaves and there's suction...So I tried to grab the lip of it to lift it out...and an enormous spider ran up my arm before I even realized what was going on!...I shook it off my arm and yelled an obscenity...I think I yelled, "Holy fuck!" It was huge!...The biggest spider I've ever encountered outside of a pet store...It sat there in a ball for a while...It was probably treading water (like those dogs in New Orleans) or holding on for dear life for quite a while...so I guess it saw my arm as a means of escape and dashed up it...I was startled, but I'm not really afraid of spiders generally...I was going to get the camera to take a picture, but I was running a bit late and it had scurried under the rolled up solar blanket...I thought that it had been through enough...so I let it be...

Several months ago, we realized that there were raccoons in the area. We saw one go up to the pool (still closed at the time) ...it leaned in and began to drink the water gathered on the cover. It was in the day time, so we thought it was a bit odd. We assumed it might have been a pregnant mother because of its size.

Months later, I was swimming at night and I heard some soft squeaking noises. I stood at the edge of where the shallow end leads to the deep end and paused. It was pretty dark, but I did see a rather large raccoon leading others down the steps to the deep end area and it drank a substantial amount of (chlorinated) water...Then it led the little ones away. I couldn't really make out how many others there were because they stayed on the steps (but we've since discovered that they travel in packs of three)...

Anyway, we borrowed a trap from my pops to maybe catch "the raccoon" before we knew how many there were...So one morning, Lasagna woke me up to inform me that we had a beast in our trap...It was a skunk! Luckily, when we borrowed the trap, my pops told me that they had captured a few stinkers in the past...So I did what my mom does and I gave the cute little fellow a cookie while I opened the trap ( a design flaw requires that you have to get right in there to disengage the trigger mechanism). He made his way out and waddled casually towards the back yard...He was really a cute little beast. Reminded me a bit of everyone's favourite date-rapist, Pepe Le Pew, as he strutted away.

We decided to return the trap because my parents needed it more (and we didn't really plan on what we would do once we caught anything)...

Oddly, despite the many local beasts, they didn't do any damage to our garden or flowers...

Oh...and there was a bat inside one of our patio umbrellas that scared the shit out of Lasagna...

Take care out there.

Your Pal,

Zambo.