defending our territory

for his birthday, ben got a cool, little spray pool thingy from uncle M and auntie K. you blow up the inflatable things like a dolphin, palm tree, whale slide, etc. then hook up the hose to it. the hose fills the edge of the "pool" with water and the water sprays out of the holes around the edge. it only fills up with a little bit of water so it's not "deep". it's a very fun water toy.

it took a lot of breath by my friend, janine, and i to blow up all these inflatables the first day. naturally, i figured we would just leave it out in the yard for these consecutive sunny days. after the first night outside, i went out in the morning and the palm tree and dolphin were deflated. hmm...i went to have a look. they were thrashed. something had completely attacked them! probably raccoons. the inflatables got the raccoons all feisty and they also attacked our baby tree in the backyard, ripping off not only a lower branch but also the top of the tree! it's so sad looking. thankfully the pool is still playable. we now drag it up to the deck and let it hang over the side of the railing at night. it's always full of water so it's heavy when you try to bring it up.

notice the blue and white lumpy thing in the foreground and the green thing in the background? those are the deflated palm and dolphin - you can't remove them from the pool so they just lay there reminding us of those stupid raccoons.

when we went camping, we put the pool under the deck until we were ready to play with it again. on monday, we pulled it out and played. monday night - dragged it up to the deck for night. tuesday, played, dragged it to the deck. wednesday, we played. forgot to drag it up to the deck.

we've just gone to bed at 11pm. tim's reading and i'm trying to fall asleep. all of a sudden, we think we hear a noise. tim looks out the window but can't see anything. i'm like, "did you put away that pool?" he hadn't. he goes back to reading, me - sleeping. i hear faint scratching sound and sit up. "raccoons". we run out of the bedroom in our underwear, turn on the light on the deck and run outside. three huge raccoons hanging out in our yard. tim hisses at them and they don't really care. i say, "we have to spray them with the hose!" and i go running down the stairs for the hose while tim chases me saying, "get back on the deck! i'll do this!" too late. i have the hose in hand but there's no nozzle. i start spraying as best i can with just the hose but i don't think it even reached them. the raccoons are laughing their heads off at us and just watching the show. tim puts the nozzle on and starts to actually spray the raccoons. they retreat into the hedge. we can tell they're still in there so tim sprays and sprays while i drag that pool up the stairs and hang it over the edge. then out of nowhere, a giant raccoon jumps off the roof of the house, lands in front of us and says: "oh this isn't over." i wasn't sure what to do, but tim stared the raccoon down and slowly growled, "get off my lawn." i felt like i was in some crazy clint eastwood movie.

umm - kidding. (thanks tim for that addition.) no more inflatable pool injuries occurred and we went back to bed after our brush with rabies.

"so anyways, that's what happened." - a. macdonald