I Live in a Zoo

When I married a vegetarian I assumed he was an unconditional animal lover, but seeing Nick last night sicking Satcho onto half a dozen raccoons in the garden while whacking the apple trees with a shovel reminded me you should never assume. Clearly, my Nicolas does not love raccoons.

The girls had picked most of the apples and pears when we thought it was going to freeze one night, and these critters were headed to the bags of fruit by the back door when they got freaked out and ran up the trees. We've tried to teach them before to stay away from the plums by having Satcho scare the poop out of them, but either they have short memories or they will do anything for a snack. Like Cayenne.

The sacks of fruit were already pretty wrecked however, by the bear who had visited the previous afternoon, gotten himself comfortable on the stoop and proceeded to eat himself silly with all our future tarts and apple sauce.

Isn't he gorgeous?

He hung out for two hours so our new friend and neighbour Petra had plenty of time to come over and get a front seat view of Colorado life. They may have cockroaches this size in Miami, but not too many bears.

The bear seemed to understand the protection glass offers because Satcho sounded ferocious, but it didn't at all bother the bear's feast - until Satcho ended up in the garden (you can safely assume here that Nick was home at this point, and I was not) and that bear shot right out of there. You can barely see out of our glass doors through all the dried slobber now. I wonder who's going to get to clean those?

So last night when I heard loud crunching of leaves lumbering through the garden I assumed the bear was back, and I was ready with the good camera this time (batteries were dead the first time) and waited. I couldn't figure out how the bear had gotten past me and into the courtyard without my spotting him from the balcony, until I saw the family of six raccoons tip-toeing to the fruit bags.

And that would be when they got to meet Satcho.