In a place where seeing deer and even moose in your yard are not uncommon, it wasn't a surprise when one of the kids said, "There's a raccoon in the yard." We visited my cousin and his family in Wyoming recently and I was very impressed when the oldest child explained how he thought through and figured out that this was a raccoon.
"Oh, wow. Yeah. O.K. Kids, get out of the yard. Stay on the deck. There's a raccoon over there by the shed. It is a wild animal so we don't want to mess with it."
The kids did a really good job of listening and staying out of the yard. A little while later my cousin's wife, Annie, came back from shopping and her son told her about the raccoon. She came to the yard to see it.
"Is that a raccoon?"
When I looked back at the raccoon, this is what I saw.
I thought it was a cat because one our neighbors has a cat with the same coloration. However, today I discovered a raccoon hiding under our deck by our koi pond. It growled at me as I walked across the deck. So I talked to it through the space in the boards until it was curious enough to peek at me. That's how I knew it was a raccoon and not a possum.
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