Big City, Little Homestead

Now that it’s autumn, the squirrels are setting up their homes for the winter. You definitely want to make sure it isn’t in your attic! No, no, not a good thing! (Damp insulation doesn’t insulate, wires can get chewed, things get soiled, yuck, no good.) So I have an article to share with you: “Something’s living in the ceiling — maybe squirrels, maybe not” —in The Washington Post. The upshot is, a company licensed for wildlife control can banish whatever is up there. More and more companies are specializing in human removal and release. And you can just as easily release them on your own property, only with reinforcement against them regaining entry to your attic.

Not that squirrels in the attic (a link with DIYs on humanely removing them) has ever been a problem for me (they’ve never gotten in). My novel solution is actually providing them housing. I do it for them seasonally. I have a new DIY called Make a Squirrel Cabin Out of Wine Crate that’ll get you started, and it’s rather an easy effort, too.

So as I described in that tutorial, I’ve had a squirrel cabin out back since oh forever, but a few years ago I started putting one up above my front door like so:

That first winter, I had at least three squirrels living in new cabin: A black one and two greys.

In 2012 I wrote about the skunk that took up residence in my yard (good), and this post here has been up since around that time. Now, twelve years later, it was due for a significant expansion, so here we are. Gosh, I love animals!

I love having garden visitors of any kind, but there’s a special charm when they’re the non-human kind. Their presence in my back yard gives both me and my human guests feelings of wonder and peace, with the occasional bout of excitement.

I’ll start with everyone’s favourite trash panda:

Raccoons

These two young raccoons spent the day snoozing in the tree overhanging my backyard. Right around that time, on an evening close to midnight, I heard a sound out back: a young, healthy raccoon raided the eggshell supply that I keep to mix with the bird seed (or dig into the garden). He (or she) also pulled down the pet laundry that I’d folded on the park bench. He seemed to like rubbing his paws all over the towel, so that was fun!  Then, he ate some stuff in the garden – leaves, slugs, who knows.

So I fetched a midnight snack myself. I started on some yogourt while watching him, when he fixed his eyes on me in that dim, myopic way raccoons have, and came up to the patio door to poke his nose into the screen: “Got some food for me?”