On Monday, my mother-in-law called to say that the raccoon was out in her front yard in the tree. It was around 1700 but I was still at work. I called Annmarie and asked her to go up to the house and shoot it. There was much discussion around where was a gun with open sights. The only one we own is an old pre64 lever action 30-30 but she did not want to put lead into the tree in case she missed the raccoon. She ended up taking the HMR17. I could not remember where the bolt action 22LR was located. I thought it was in the closet but the first two rifles she pulled out of the closet was my 30-06 and 243. I knew where the HMR 17 was located. The suppressed 22 pistol would be the best tool but she does not like the pistol, she feels more comfortable with a rifle.

It turns out that by the time she got to the house the raccoon was no longer in the tree. It was in the center of a blackberry bush in the back yard. She killed it in the exact middle of a very large blackberry bush. When I got home late I changed clothes and grabbed a couple of flashlights. I did also take the pistol just in case. I could not reach the raccoon carcass. I tried laying in my belly and crawling into the center of the bush and could not make it in as deep as the raccoon had. I ended up spotting a shovel over by the house and chopped my way into the middle of the bush. From the hole I created I was able to bend down and reach in further with the shovel to remove the carcass.

I did not think the mother-in-law would call about the raccoon but it started to pick on her cats. Once it was caught roughing up her cats, the gloves came off and she was ready for it to disappear permanently.

We have been working on trying to tame down two more cats for our backyard shelf. Luna is over 18 years old and will not last forever. We need two cats to live back there to keep the mice population in check. We are making progress, the cats don’t run at the first sight of us. They will even stay in place while we set out food. Another 1-2 months and I think they will at least be comfortable enough to just sit on the ledge and wait for food. We don’t expect them to be tame enough to touch.