Young Make Their Debut This baby racoon, already a skilled climber, has much to learn about surviving in the wild. This is baby animal time. Some birds have been hatched and are quite grown already, such as robins. Others are recently fledged and undoubtedly will be fed for a week or more by the parents. My new, comparatively small "Kentucky" bluebird house was successful with four babies raised and already on the wing. Hopefully the parents will have a second brood which is quite common for this region. The woodpeckers that frequent our feeders, including the red-bellied, hairy and downy, are all feeding babies now, judging by the mouthfuls of marvel meal they take with them to wherever their young may be. We’ve seen a few baby hairies in the front yard so we know they’re out of the nest. The adult American goldfinches continue to get seeds from our platform feeders but it will be several weeks before they begin to nest. Both the crows and raven babies have been pleading for food, so it won’t be long before they’ll be on their own too. Last week a baby woodchuck was in our front yard, the smallest we’ve seen at our place for a few years. After nibbling on some grasses and other wild plants in the front yard it began to move toward our annual flower beds and that’s when Charlotte went racing down the stairs to chase the little critter away. We’ve noticed some of the leaves of our gaillardias have been partly eaten and suspect it has been either the woodchuck or the cottontail. Our resident adult cottontail munches away on the long grass and other greenery around the wild border of our small front yard, often in broad daylight, and appears to be quite contented with that food. Now we are seeing only one adult at a time, while a month or so ago it was common for two to be together. Presumably there will be young entering the scene before long. On the other hand, we’ve been seeing an adult great-horned owl practically every day along our driveway and suspect that its present diet may include young cottontails, gray squirrels and perhaps some of the other baby mammals that it can handle. These young animals are still not fully "educated," are slower moving and surely are fair game for the owls and other natural predators. The other very young mammal that has been a frequent visitor here during the past week is a raccoon. Ordinarily the young remain with the mother for quite some time, but this one has apparently gotten lost, or perhaps its mother was somehow killed. We know that it can climb very well because we inadvertently surprised it a few days ago while it was scrounging for food in the front yard and immediately it slowly but surely climbed to the very tip of the tall white ash tree near the feeders. Shortly after we went indoors the little animal returned to the ground and continued to search for food. The woodpeckers in their haste to fill their beaks with marvel meal are forever dropping bits of the food to the ground and it’s these tidbits that the raccoon is after. Not only the raccoon but the blue jays also have learned to watch for the woodpeckers’ arrival, knowing that they are messy eaters and are forever spilling part of their food onto the ground below the "jay-proof" feeder. Yes, a few of the jays have mastered the caged-in marvel meal -- smart birds! Speaking about mammal-proof bird feeders, one huge adult male raccoon has mastered the metal pole and large baffles on the two platform feeders as well as the marvel meal feeder, feeders which for the past several years have eliminated these animals’ access. Now it’s back to the drawing board, and this time I think I will devise a marvel meal feeder that I can simply lift off the post and take indoors at night. The two platform feeders will require some other ingenious method for preventing the raccoons from cleaning them out nightly. I’ve heard the gray squirrel referred to as the "Houdini" of the mammal world. Experience tells us that the raccoon, black robber’s mask and all, would also qualify for this title. Even though the 76-inch small-mesh wire fence completely encircling our large garden has thus far eliminated cottontails, raccoons, woodchucks and deer, we’re wondering if the huge male raccoon will succeed in mastering that minor obstacle once the sweet corn begins to ripen. By the way should you ever have a problem with raccoons in your chimney, attic, of other "off-limits" parts of your house or garage, you can quite easily force them to leave by placing an aluminum pie plate containing a sponge saturated with ammonia near to where the animals are "holed up." This may also work for other uninvited mammal guests that have taken up residence in your buildings. We have no intentions of feeding the young raccoon other than what it is capable of obtaining entirely on its own. This small creature and its kin, along with scores of other birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and insects are part of the wild world around us and gradually we are learning how to live without too many incidents in the woods that rightfully belongs to them. This column appeared in the Door County Advocate on 07/05/2003. © Copyright 2003 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.