Spring

View out the back of my cabin

 It's probably been a good 10 years since I've had this much snow this late in the season.  Since I took this photo I've gotten another inch or so, and it's still snowing, if not as heavily as it was earlier.  At this point I have pretty close to 5 inches of snow. 

The feeder birds are fast emptying the feeders, and the chickens are unhappy--typical for a snowstorm. 


Road up to cabin



I caught the second raccoon--a vicious, large one that snarled and tried to attack from inside the live trap.  He was removed to the same spot as the one I caught the day before.  He was the ringleader of the raccoon gang.  I have since discovered I have a third raccoon, which I haven't yet tried to trap.  With the gang broken up, this one so far seems to be doing normal raccoon things, which I don't much mind. 

This one is still rolling the railroad ties from around the bottom of the chicken pen, but seems more interested in finding chicken pellets that find their way outside the pen than in digging or chewing its way inside the pen. So unless that changes, this one is no different than the myriad of other raccoons that inhabit and have shared my forest neighborhood. 

I'm willing to let it alone as long as it doesn't change that tune.

As you might expect from my photos, spring is definitely on hold.  The peepers have stopped peeping.  Spring greenery was next to nonexistant anyway, so no tender spring growth will be shocked or killed by this storm. And though late snows rarely last long, this one might hang around longer than most as the weather forecast doesn't include much of a warmup for the rest of this week.  I guess I'll just have to keep wearing my midwinter sweaters for a while longer yet.