Monday, March 05, 2007

Those Rascally Raccoons

This is what we awoke to this morning:



The dove on the railing might seem a likely suspect, but it was actually raccoons! Last week, they threw off the top of the birdfeeder AND knocked out one of the plexiglass panels. But this time....well, you see what they did.

Squirrels are nothing compared to the raccoons.

You might remember how, during the summer, we cooed over the baby raccoons living in the sewer gutter in front of our apartment. Hmph. Now they're causing trouble.

Here's another picture....chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, some of which also contain cranberries. Yum! I'll post the recipe tomorrow.



The Conference
Last week was a killer with all of the conference activities. It was go go go from 7:30 am to 10:00 pm for four freakin' days.

I wish I could have actually listened to the research panels and other presentations, but I was constantly checking on things like catering or handouts. It was utterly exhausting.

Fortunately, the research fellows were a great group. We had people from Belgium, Germany, France, the UK, Turkey, South Africa, Nigeria, Turkey, Nepal, Australia, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, and the US.

On Saturday, the last day, we went on a bus tour of St. Louis. The tour guide was a staid woman, a humorless retired grade school teacher whose head nearly exploded at least three times during the tour because of the rowdiness of the research fellows. The tour actually became a parody. I mean, you can't make simplistic statements like, "the British didn't like the French," to a group of international scholars without receiving laughs. It was hilarious.

Other Things
Hmmm....I haven't really had a chance to do anything non-conference related. Yesterday, we went to the grocery store, did laundry, and made dinner and cookies. Today, I cleaned up the disaster zone that was my office. I can actually walk around in it now without running into a box of conference stuff!

Yay!

4 comments:

Cindy said...

Wow! Those are some pesky raccoons. We had doves nesting in the flower box on the railing of our former porch, but no raccoon problems, thank goodness!

Carrie said...

I'm particularly worried about having a container garden on our deck with these raccoons. I can only imagine the problems that they will cause!

Anonymous said...

racoons can be your friends. if by friends, you mean monster-y claw laden scavengers who eat trash and like it. but somewhere under all that fiesty rummaging, don't you think that racoons have something wonderful inside?

hmm. I sometimes feel like a racoon.

cj

Carrie said...

They were so cute when they were babies!! With their little heads poking out of the gutter...sigh.

Your comment reminds me of a This American Life story about a woman being chased and tackled by a rabid raccoon. It was quite scary.