Mid June in Santa Cruz~ and wildlife!!!

WILDlife!!!! IN our house!

 Yes, this is a baby raccoon!

We knew they were under the house, actually, the mother and babies were BETWEEN the first story bathroom ceiling and the second floor bathroom floor. Mama and baby FELL through the ceiling on Tuesday June 18th, Sheon's birthday-night.

Oh, my gosh.... if someone had been showering... how awful would that have been?!

 
The mother climbed back up...

And Taka was brave~ (what a Man!!!) to push baby into a bucket... they make the most awful growling, mean noises!!!!

We left the baby outside the hole the mother had been going in and out of~

 But, by the next morning the baby hadn't been taken back in by it's mother.

I called Native Animal Rescue, and they gave me the number for Wildlife Rescue, 

who told me to take the baby to the first place 

(like a hospital- who later got the baby to where many raccoons are taken care of~a raccoon farm of sorts?)

and Wildlife Rescue checked with the landlord who gave the ok for them to come clean our bathroom...and the way they got the raccoon mama to leave with the other babies was by putting an aromatic citronella spray on newspaper and stuffed it in the hole! The raccoon left by pushing through the newspaper, but somehow hates newspaper?! AND that smell, and she left with babies by the following morning! Thursday!! We had tried moth balls, cayanne, loud talk radio, lights... it had been more than a month, and we didn't want the mother captured and babies left to die... but the wildlife people were the most excellent! And raccoon feces, we learned, can cause ringworm... and YUCK! SO their cleaning up as they did was the ULTIMATE! The even nailed a board over the hole in the shower until the manager could return to repair it. 

We did hear that a raccoon- the Mother raccoon I presume, ran in the open front door of the neighbor's house a couple days later! Still looking for baby?!!

Well... and then outside in our BACK yard... I just wanted to show you. This photo was where Naomi was "breaking ground" in our new rental near the end of March.

This is looking from our kitchen window down... after Taka put in some beds....

 
Behind the far bed, you can see little sunflowers peaking over the side...

And now, at the end of June!

The sunflowers, all tall now! And may bloom...by mid July?

 

This has been some of what we've been up to!