They've caused me far more grief with their destroying of plants than actual fish losses. They rip everything to shreds. I think they tear styrofoam apart looking for grubs. Maybe they think it is rotten wood since the texture is similar? They are always looking for something to eat. I've found water hyacinths ten feet from the pond with bites out of them. Ditto waterlilies. One waterlily was removed from my yard and never seen again after they ripped it up out of it's pot. I found torn pads but never the rhizome. They knocked the hose off the pump in my father's little preform years ago and it drained the pond then they ate all the fish. They learned to do this on purpose and came back and did it three more times before he gave up on having a pond.

Kirts, I feel like you are being wise to plan ahead. With the continuing modernization of some countries, like China and India, where the demand for oil and gas and other petroleum products is increasing exponentially every year, I see our energy costs continuing to rise. Since the average item in a grocery store in the USA travels about 1500 miles BEFORE it reaches the grocery store shelves, obviously the ever-increasing energy/transport costs will keep food costs rising. The changes we are seeing in the commercial agriculture industry and the food distribution network may force a lot of us to try to eat more locally. In the slow food movement, I think they refer to the effort to eat only locally-produced food as being a locavore. In addition, when you consider that a lot of the chemical fertilizers used by commercial farmers are linked to the petroleum industry, it is easy to believe that food costs will continue to go up because of rising fertilizer costs as well. I think people will turn to organic gardening as a means of lessening their dependence on foreign energy/fertilizers. There are many ways to store food and I use several of them. We have a tornado shelter and I use it to store root crops like potatoes and onions harvested in the summer as well as winter squash harvested in the fall. I have even stored winter squash on a shelf in the garage/barn and have had it last as long as 4-6 months in there. We have a large pantry located under our home's staircase. It is about 3 feet wide and maybe 12 deep. The height varies from 8' to about 2'. Back in that 2' area I store odds and ends we don't use often, like the pressure canner and my set of 4 huge stainless steel stockpots I use a lot during the harvest season. I freeze lots and lots of stuff. I always chop and slice onions and peppers and freeze them. I can usually raise a year's supply (or more) in the spring garden. I usually freeze tons of corn (I could can it if I didn't have storage space, but I do have storage space so I just freeze it.) Some years I get enough corn from the spring and fall gardens that we don't have to buy corn at all. The same is true of green beans and black-eyed peas. I even freeze tomatoes--they go straight from the freezer to the soup or saucepot in the winter. Okra is a little more iffy. We eat so much of it that I don't usually freeze much. I need to grow more, but the deer have been an issue with it for years, although I believe we've finally solved that problem. Thus, I should be able to grow more of it in the future. Carrots do best for me in the fall garden. If you have them in a well drained bed, you can leave them in the bed for months and harvest as needed. Another way to store them is in a clean trash can filled with sand. Pour a few inches of sand into the container, then put down a layer of carrots and repeat until all your carrots are stored. You also can keep them in a root cellar OR a refrigerator for months. Carrots can be frozen and even dehydrated. I dehydrate a lot of stuff. I then store all my bags of dehydrated veggies in the freezer, but you don't have to put them in the freezer. If you are careful to get out all the moisture, you can store dried veggies in the pantry. Even cantaloupes, muskmelon, watermelon and other lesser-known melons can be frozen. I usually cut them into squares, or use a melon baller to make them into melon balls and freeze them. You also can slice them into rather thin slices and dehydrate them. Their flavor and sweetness are so intensified by drying them that they are like candy. Anything that you grow in the garden can be dehydrated although some things take a pretty long time. I've never tried dehydrating corn, but I am sure it would work. Shelled beans dry naturally without dehydration and so do black-eyed peas. Many herbs can be tied in bundles and hung in a dry, warm, dark location to dry naturally. Canning is a lot of work and can be hazardous if done improperly, but as long as you follow all the recommended procedures and are careful, it is a great way to preserve food too. Cabbage will store a long time in a refrigerator or in a root cellar type situation. Back when people HAD to raise all the own food, a lot of them make sauerkraut to preserve the cabbage for winter, but I am not much of a sauerkraut person. There's always pickles too. You can pickle LOTS of veggies, not just cucumbers. You can pickle peppers, onions, carrots, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, watermelon rinds, etc. You also can make all kinds of relish and, there again, not just pickle relish but squash and others as well. Fruit can be frozen, dried or canned and you also can make preserves, jams and jellies. You can even make tomato preserves or marmalade. Storing food is not as hard as most people think, but it takes a lot of effort. If you want to expand your garden for next year, you could start building lasagna type beds this year. Although, as much as the heat bothers you and with your allergies, you might prefer to wait until fall to start laying out your garden beds. I like to clean out my garden beds in the fall and remove all debris. This is very important because many garden pests overwinter in plant debris. Usually I let the chickens roam around in the garden beds in December and they will dig and scratch and take care of lots of insects, insect eggs, weed seeds, etc. I also like to heap up tons and tons and tons of shredded leaves, gathered from our wooded areas, on top of the beds as soon as they are cleaned out after the first hard frost. The chopped-up leaves decompose into a lovely leaf mold or compost by spring. (If you don't chop them up, they break down a lot more slowly.) I also prefer to go ahead and add manure and compost to the beds in the winter months, so my beds are "ready to go" in the spring. Sometimes in a bad wildfire year, though, I stay too busy to get the garden beds cleaned up and replenished with compost, manure and leaves in winter. In those years, I really have a hard time planting on schedule because the beds aren't ready. I do all my planning and seed ordering in late fall to early winter. By the time the new seed catalogs arrive, I am usually about "done" although there is always something new that convinces me to order one more batch of seeds. Because my family understands and supports my gardening habit, my Christmas gifts are always handy useful things like gardening gloves (five pair last year, everything from goatskin to latex-dipped cotton to suede) and hand tools and such. One of my favorite garden gifts (I always ask Santa for this one) is a big cannister of electrical zip-ties. I use them to attach tomato cages to stakes, etc. There are several really, really useful vegetable gardening books and food preservation books that I find ESSENTIAL to my success as a veggie gardener. I have had most of them for years and years and years and still refer to them constantly. I'll make a list of them later. I'm off to the store to pick up some more food preservation supplies--processing all that corn wiped out my supply of freezer bags, and I need some pickling supplies before the cucumbers get out of control. I'll write later about corn and veggies. Dawn

Racoons are SMART. They know there are "good pickin's" to be had in the 'burbs! Think about the stuff you put into the trash bags, people... for an enterprising, clever, and omniverous creature, you just SET A BUFFET! duh! Digging for grubs in a lawn sounds more like skunk behavior than a 'coon, at least in my area. (Just had a a "skunked" dog, too... first time ever. LOL). I view foxes, 'coons, skunks as the "night shift". My pets come indoors for the night and the wild ones do a "neighborhood sweep". I'm fine with it. Our pets are vaccinated and indoors at night... so occasionally the late night canine wee-wee disrupts Mr. Skunkie's "round" and the dog gets a snootful? -hit happens. I can deal with that! (and even find it funny).

I just want to urge you to put her back and keep an eye on her, and see if the mama will come back and get her. It is okay to raise a baby raccoon, if it is an orphan, but they really do need to be raised with another one. If you can find a wildlife rehabber, that would be the best thing. She needs milk like Esbilac. Do not give her regular milk or human baby formula. Don't give her carrots. A little something for a treat...like a bite, might not be bad, but she is going to develope diarrhea if you aren't careful. They can be very messy and carry a lot of parasites that you don't want to be involved with. You can give her some dry kitten food....like Kitten Chow...that would be better. Also if she is eating well...a little fruit like a couple of bites of banana or apple. You don't want to give her a lot of fruit, either. It is against the law here to keep a raccoon as a pet. I think you can be fined up to $1500. If you don't know a rehabber...get ahold of Parks and Wildlife...or whatever it is called in your state....the game wardens. They usually know and work closely with rehabbers. Baby raccoons are very cute and sweet, but you don't want a raccoon for a pet. She needs to either be back with her mother....who would have retrieved her from the ground, most likely, because they do leave their babies during the day for several hours at a time. They move them almost every day, once they get to a certain size. If the baby was in good condition, that shows that it wasn't orphaned, most likely, and that the mother was somewhere around. The reason they need to be raised with other raccoons, is so they bond with raccoons and siblings will stay together most of their first year. Whatever you do....do not take the baby out somewhere, like in the woods, and leave it. It would be kinder to have it put down. Do not raise it and take it out and leave it, either. Raccoons are extremely territorial and they do not tolerate new raccoons in their territory. The raccoon would be lost and have no idea where to go. I suggest taking her to the wildlife center now, and let her be raised with other raccoons by people who are used to handling them. I know you are attached to her, but this would be the easiest, kindest thing for you to do. I'm sorry this is so disjointed. I am feeding 6 orphan kittens while trying to type this.