Meet The Bandit!! This was a picture taken of her last April. She came every night and by July was bringing her babies, 4 of them. Too adorable!!! Well, after a winter hiatus, SHE'S BACK!!! This is so exciting and makes me realise that leaving winter isn't all bad. At first I thought it might be Raindrop, one of her babies from last year, but after looking though photos, I think its her. There are many great tales about her which I'm sure I'll share in time.
Below right is a picture I took of her tonight. You can see, she likes raiding the feeders! I love raccoons, there is something about their solitary quietness that feels safe to me. Hopefully by years end I will have a permit to work with them (as rabies vector species one needs a special licence, though they have rabies far less than most people think). Many injured raccoons are immediately put down because of people's fear about their ability to carry disease, and so few people are registered to work with them. I hope that WTS can eventually have a place for these animals to recover and get healthy.
Besides The Bandit and despite the odd flurry, there are lots of signs that spring is nigh. There were about 100 Robins at the bottom of my driveway in a neighbours yard yesterday. Quite a sight! So they are back too. And there have been geese flying overhead non-stop. The vets at Cornell just had to amputate an irreparable broken wing on a Snow Goose this week who was injured on her long trip back north. They found her a good home to go to once she has healed. There were quite a lot of geese flying over WTS tonight and you could make out by the light of the moon. It's a clear night which is probably quite good for navigation during their migration back north. Something quite wonderful and reassuring hearing them fly overhead. Despite all of humanity's corruption of wild things there are some things we can't touch; that we don't even understand. For more on geese migration take a look at: http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/geese.htm
From left to right: Raindrop, BigMan & Ivy, Bandit's 2007 brood. NB: this was not taken with a zoom lens!
