A Few Quick Notes 579

-After a few days of temperatures over 30, we've now returned to much more pleasant temperatures.  Even though it's about 14 and overcast at the moment I am not inclined to complain.

-Our local raccoon made a particularly early appearance yesterday afternoon.  By my calculations he was out rummaging around through construction debris before 5:00 PM, which seems early for an animal that's supposed to be nocturnal.

-Thanks to some recent sun our balcony garden is finally starting to look as though it might turn out quite well.  Over the past few days the bean, tomato, and pepper plants have started to do particularly well.  I'm even hopeful that some of our herbs may eventually be large enough to harvest.

-In the bathroom we started some wheat a few days ago.  Much to our surprise, these plants have put on inches in just days.  Eventually we are hoping that the plants will be large enough that they will provide a natural privacy barrier in front of the bathroom window.

This is a classier solution than mini-blinds, right?

-The recent mailed body parts/gruesome murder story has really been dominating the news in Ottawa for the past few days.  I keep imagining this is because of the Ottawa connection to the crime, but now that I've seen a little bit of the non-Ottawa coverage I'm wondering if the coverage is so extensive just because this is such a bizarre and gruesome crime?

My hours of Raccoon Watch finally paid off

Soon after we moved into our new Ottawa apartment we learned that, like many urban areas in North America, our neighborhood has something of a raccoon problem. Much to our surprise it took only a few days for us to spot a local raccoon making its way across the roof of the garage behind our building.

After this first sighting we soon learned that if you wanted to see this local raccoon all you needed to do was sit on our balcony at dusk and, like clockwork, it will make its way across the roof and through a gap between the garage and the adjacent fence.

After about two days of this apparent pattern I was hooked. I started spending at least a few minutes our balcony each night watching and listening for this neighborhood raccoon to make its nightly appearance. Even after only five or ten minutes to my stakeout I was almost always rewarded with an appearance by the raccoon.

Of course one of the frustrations of my nightly watch was my seeming inability to take a photo of the creature that didn't look as though I had taken a photo of dirt. After a few dozen photos I was beginning to think that I might never be able to properly capture a reasonable image of our furry friend.

Finally on Friday night my luck turned. Our neighbors seem to have been kind enough to have left some trash out for the raccoon to rummage through on Thursday night, and then they were also kind enough to leave the shredded bag in the same place on their back steps all day on Friday.

This great generosity on the part of our neighbors turned out to be enough to attract the raccoon back for a second feeding from the same source on Friday night. Because the back porch on which the pile of garbage was located was a story off the ground and also not the ground I was finally able to have a much better view of the animal.

It turned out all I needed to get a better shot of the animal was a better view, and maybe also the raccoon's innate sense of performance.

While I won't go so far as to say that this is a great, or even good, photo of a raccoon, at least it is a photo of a raccoon that is clearly a photo of a raccoon.