It's Friday and I'm Nuts!

Hola! The forecasters are promising that the never-ending rain and thunderstorms are supposed to blow out of here tomorrow - we only have to get through today. It's been dark and gloomy since a week ago Friday and raining since noon last Saturday. I'm wondering what the suicide rate in Seattle is - doesn't it rain there all the time? I probably would have done myself in a few days ago already, but we had a couple hours of sunshine, in between the early morning and 5 p.m. thunderstorms Wednesday and Thursday, and a glimpse of blue skies and sun this morning! I cannot deal with unrelenting gloom and the constant threat of the mold monster lurking in my backyard, ready to devour my house (it's now about 12 cubic feet large).

The weather people aren't even reporting how much rain has fallen anymore; we've been under flash flood warnings for the past four days, and there is severe flooding along the Mississippi border area of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Yesterday Chicago got hammered pretty bad - they'd been dodging the bullets all week but yesterday made up for it, almost 200,000 people without power, winds strong enough to damage trees and buildings. We've had trees downed here too, but they are falling over, literally, because they are so top heavy that the sodden ground is not holding the roots!

Last night I did my usual 'check the patio door and turn on the deck light to scare away the critters before I lock up for the night' routine, and the juvenile raccoons were out in the backyard scavenging. I banged on the glass and yelled and one went scampering over the retaining wall and made a bee-line under the north fence, but the companion, he just sat on top of the retaining wall and stared in my direction. I opened the door and clapped and yelled and he slowly sauntered off. I turned off the light and waited a few minutes (there she goes again, playing games with the critters, the neighbors sigh to themselves) and then turned it back on - now there were THREE raccoons! And then - oh - FOUR raccoons! Banged on the glass and yelled again - they didn't even blink, courage in numbers, I guess. They didn't hang around long, though, perhaps the light bothered them or perhaps they thought I might pull out the hose and blast them a cold stinging stream of water. So, one of the raccoons who's been hanging around here for the past three years has become a momma of four babies, and they all survived - I figured they were siblings because they were all the same size and they weren't fighting with each other like I figured juveniles from competing mommas might do. I must be feeding the critters too well...

Demon Squirrel Alert!!!! This story was NOT written on April Fool's Day. I wonder what's in the water in this Russian town where squirrels allegedly attacked and killed a dog just because he was being, well, a dog, barking up the trees at them! And who ate all the pinecones? From the BBC website:

Last Updated Thursday, 1 December 2005, 18:14 GMT

Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog'

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

A "big" stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

"They literally gutted the dog," local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them."

Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack.

While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds' nests, he said, the idea of them chewing a dog to death was "absurd".

"If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests," he added.
Komosmolskaya Pravda notes that in a previous incident this autumn chipmunks terrorised cats in a part of the territory.

A Lazo man who called himself only Mikhalich said there had been "no pine cones at all" in the local forests this year.

"The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat," he added.