Our pal James H. Burns sent in the following and asked that I share it with you here…
Mark, Your feeding your outside creatures may have saved a few lives, three thousand miles away! At least by way of inspiration…
I've had animals almost my entire life, but in the suburbs of New York, it's considered risky to leave food outside at night, for the raccoons here, by reputation anyway, can be a bit destructive…
Don't get me wrong. I grew up in a family where we'd leave food outside each morning, for the birds and squirrels. (How can some folks be afraid of the latter? I find it rather neat that across a few different decades, I've known squirrels so friendly that they'll actualy knock on my door, when they'd feel like a snack!)
But, inspired by your columns and accounts, I started leaving some cat food out at night, about a year-and-a-half ago. (And during those wild winter storms last year, sometimes twice an evening, particularly when pulling an all-nighter!)
If you've grown up loving animals, such an adjustment is easy, and the rewards, as you know, many. Watching a raccoon eating just a few feet away from a cat who's dining just a few feet away from a possum is simply just kind of delightful.
And I was absolutely astonishted a few weeks ago, when a mother raccoon whom I'd "known," I guess, since 2010, suddenly trusted me with her five new offspring, leaving my backyard (with me and the brood standing there) for about ten minutes, to check on another calling…
The best story, though, happened at the end of last winter, when an orange tabby I'd observed for a while (but only through a window) suddenly jumped into my arms as I was placing the evening's meal. I
wrote that, ahem, tale, up for Newsday last June, but like many newspapers, their online edition is now only available to subscribers. So I was surprised to just discover that the column is now available at
their related newspaper website, AM NY…It seems my little friend was pregnant. And all the FIVE of us can now say, is thanks again for setting one of many good examples!
Great story. And for the benefit of those who've written to ask: Yes, I still feed the same four feral cats in my backyard. There are occasional guest appearances by other stray felines but the Big Four protect their turf and they chase interlopers off. They don't, however, mind the possums that come around from time to time.
I had raccoons until just recently. I may still have them and just not have seen them…but about two weeks ago, I spotted a New Generation: A mama raccoon and four babies. I figured that before the kids learned where to go for food, I needed to break them off so I began taking the food in at night except when I was downstairs to monitor who was getting it. Some evenings, I take my iPad down and sit on the back step and web-surf while the cats have their late night meals, then I bring in what they don't eat. The raccoons usually come late and the possums, when they show up at all, come early…so I adjust the buffets accordingly and I think I'm managing to feed cats and possums but not raccoons.
I hope the raccoons find other places to dine but in this neighborhood, it's probably just going to mean someone else's pet food dishes or trash cans. Sure wish there was some way to trap them and release them in Griffith Park or something…but after many calls to local city and humane agencies, I didn't find any real solution that didn't involve hiring someone to come in and kill them. And even that would just eliminate the current batch. If I'm going to spend money on exterminators, the pests I'm going to get rid of are zealots who come to my door and try to convert me to their religion. The raccoons are a lot less annoying.