baby raccoons

This past weekend we found out that there were four baby raccoons that come to our deck to visit at times!

Here are the raccoon sightings so far this year:

We saw a mommy raccoon with two babies late one night a few weeks ago on the street near our drive way. (At first we thought they were cats!) When they saw us they headed off to our neighbor's yard across from ours.

Then another night we saw the mommy raccoon with one of her babies in front of our garage drinking rain water that was in a small hand cart. (We saw the mom's ears first... and we thought they belonged to a kitty again!)

One evening last week I saw two baby raccoons playing on the trees by the backyard gate. They were so tiny and cute!

After knowing that they were slightly active in our side yard John started putting out a big pot of water for them (so they don't try to drink dirty rain water off the hand carts!) and put out little fruit, nuts, and sweets for them by the deck (the side that's not right by the kitchen). They have been coming to eat their snacks off and on.

And this past weekend John thought he heard the raccoons one night, and decided to cut up some bananas and a muffin to the deck, placed them next to the water pot, and then sit quietly with our digital camera.

The raccons were there! At one point four raccons were on the edge of the deck eating banana pieces! They seemed to have seen John, but were not disturbed at all. They took some pieces of food, drank some water, and climbed back on the trees. John got about 6 minutes of footage with the camera, and then the battery died. I will post the video after we upload it.

I think the dogs know these little creatures come and visit our yard, because they always sniff around the deck areas when they go to the backyard, but so far only Naicha saw the two baby raccoons with me the other evening (which thankfully she didn't get too excited about). Everyone keeps to itself and doesn't bother one another. I think it's good this way.

From what we had read, raccoons travel a lot. We're not sure if the four raccoons that we saw on the video do live in our trees, but we now know that at least 4 raccons come, drink water, and eat the treats John put out for them.