Two Visitors

I shared before about some unexpected visitors (insects and animals) that we have had over the years. Here are a few others that we've had.

There was a motion alert on one of the security cameras one evening at the in-town office. I took a quick look to see if it was anything important — there was a river otter running around the parking lot. There was a time in Missouri that river otters were almost extinct. Conservation efforts over the past 40 years have been successful and otters are quite common around rivers and large bodies of water. But, an otter triggering the security camera was really unusual since there are no large bodies of water near that office. This otter must have just been travelling and took a break to roll around in the gravel. 

One day when I was leaving for the day I saw a large grasshopper on the hood of my car. This was what they call a “differential grasshopper.” They can grow to 2 inches in length and this one was full grown. When I was a kid, we would catch these grasshoppers to use as bait to go fishing. On this day I just kept an eye on him as I was driving home. He stayed put for the entire trip home. He stayed long enough for me to get a picture but hopped off before I could catch him.

We have also had a family of raccoons make several appearances recently. These visits have been somewhat amusing. I had some foam packing material to dispose of and walked out to the dumpster. I tossed the first piece of foam in and much to my surprise, the dumpster growled at me! I got closer and looked in and there was a raccoon and he was not happy with me for tossing the foam into the dumpster. I was glad it was just a piece of foam. I put the remaining foam in more cautiously and found out the raccoon was not alone. There were 3 raccoons in the dumpster. I went back in the office and asked for some help in tipping the dumpster. I assumed if we tipped it on its side the raccoons would rush out to freedom. I was wrong. We tipped the dumpster over and one raccoon ran out and directly toward us, running between the legs of one of the guys helping! We were not expecting that. We expected it to run away from us. I agreed I would not share the security camera recording of our reactions! The other two raccoons did not want to leave the dumpster. We banged on the side and another one rushed at us. The last one was content to stay in the dumpster. After a bit of prodding around with a long stick to move trash, we got the last one to leave and that one rushed at us as well. We set the dumpster back upright. Problem solved right? Well, it was until the next day when the raccoons were back in the dumpster. It was harder to get help after the first day because the raccoons were less scared of us with each passing day. They were not having any problems getting into the dumpster but once inside they could not get out. We checked the security cameras to see how they were getting in, and it turns out that there was a large concrete barricade that was too close to it. The raccoons were climbing onto the concrete barricade and then jumping about 5 feet over to the dumpster. After the fourth day of getting the raccoons out, we moved the dumpster. It is now too far for the raccoons to jump over to it and we haven't seen them around since.

As I said previously, I enjoy living and working in an area where you never know what visitors will show up.