Last evening when the dusk was coming on I realized I forgot to eat. I put the kettle on for a cup of tea and a cup of soup and opened the bread bag but found that the bread had a green spot. I put the bread out into the composter and made my tea and a cup of soup, and got a few crackers instead. I just sat down in the cloth porch to eat, when I heard rustling in the forest almost right in front of me. It got louder and louder and I started to feel a little bit nervous, so I picked up my tea and soup and went into the tiny house, closed the screen door and watched. I was relieved within a minute, when a baby racoon came out of the “prickly pear”. I grabbed my camera and went out to take some photos of the cute little coon and the sibling that I could now see. I tried to be really quiet when I slid the screen door back open but when I did this the baby coons ran up into the tree which is second in line behind the ancestor tree. The other thing that happened is that Big Mama Coon ran toward the cloth porch. She got about three feet away and stood on her hind legs, hands up and claws out. She growled really loudly at me like a bear from a Hollywood film – she was sort of scary, to tell you the truth. At the same time as this the other baby coons were climbing the trees and some were running toward the composter. I counted 6 babies and Mama.
I tried to photograph Mama but the only thing that I got was shiny photos of the fabric.
I left the cloth porch and went out to the dog garden and took a few photos which also all turned out terrible and made me again wish that I had a better camera. Sigh…
When I came back into the house and had a look at Ted Andrews book Animal Speak to see what some of his thoughts are on racoons. I was not surprised to read that they are tiny distantly related cousins to bears after seeing Mama ferociously trying to intimidate me so that she could protect her babies.
The little bears worked at the composter until they got in and then the played outside the Tiny House for about two hours while I read from the above mentioned book and tried to watch them through the shadows of night. Here are the rather Where’s Waldo sort of silly images. These are the best that I could do with my silly crap camera. Can you see any racoons? I know where they are and I have a hard time seeing them.
What a great brush with nature, I wish I could share it better with you.
Tiny House Ontario 
I have a good camera and have a difficult time doing night time shots, I’m going to ask ashlee for pointers, she took photography in high school 🙂