Jean, not sure how big the little guys (and gals) would be after a year, but here's some info from this site - "After mating has occurred the gestation period for raccoons is 60 to 73 days. Then the females give birth to one to eight cubs, with an average of three or four cubs. At birth the cubs are helpless with closed ears and eyes, but they open after 18 to 24 days. The cubs nurse for a weaning period of 70 days, and the mother still continues to give protection up to one year (Fox, 2001). At this point the yearlings will disperse for up to 75 miles to find their own home ranges. The time that the mother and young spend together represents the most significant bond in raccoon social behavior, but it ends after about one year (Graham, 1997)." Maybe you already knew all of that! It could be that the young'uns are off on a new life adventure. :) Brenda

PM2: Thank you, glad you like the little stories and I'm glad not to have had hamsters - but I did lose a turtle under a washing machine in 1953...RIP. I had the same problem with hungry and curious climbers a few years ago and applied mineral oil to the pole which did create a slippery slope of comedy for two days. Then I felt horrible thinking that if mineral oil does that laxative business to humans (Oh, dear) so I stopped greasing the pole so as not to grease the little guys'..., well, you get the idea. After making several totally ineffective homemade devices to thwart the clever little tykes, I went to the hardware store and bought the Audobon deflector (recommended by Claire) which, two years later, has not been conquered. Pure and simple, it works. With or without a squirrel deflector, all the ground feeders - Republicans, Democrats, Independents alike -benefit from the big wingers swinging and squabbling over everything. Seed ends up on the ground anyway. Let there be peace. Jane Here is a link that might be useful: Ace - Audobon deflector

Omigawd nagamaki! Just when you think you've heard everything! Thanks for mentioning Media Matters, Althea - I could not remember its name when I was posting those earlier links. (I actually have the video of JS's appearance on CF - somewhere.....it was right after TDS had won several Emmy awards & I'm guessing he felt his job was safe enough for him to be outspoken......?The other part that's quite amusing is JS's comments on TDS RE: his experience & the cancellation of CF.) Thanks to TDS, many people are getting info they wouldn't otherwise. Speaking of the EPA & the admin.'s dismissal of whistleblower cases - yesterday on AAR's Laura Flanders Show, I heard the guest (from PEER) cite 1 example of employees exposed to berillium(sp?) w/o their knowledge - it was heinous >= ( (& altho it's a separate subject, I'd like to mention that yesterday on Ring of Fire, there was a report on mercury, children & neurological damage & figures cited were quite disturbing :something like 1/6 children w/ some sort of neuro damage/disability???!!! & the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit - namely, discussion of the likely reason why there has been a legislative push to protect pharma companies from legal reprisals for damages from vaccines - & the recent passage of that bill RE: class action lawsuits.) There is a site, BTW that archives AAR programming......

Macro capabilities are important to me. But my experience thus far with digitals verses film SLR has brought forth some interesting peeves. Focussing and jitter control are often automatic and a lot of folks just shoot and let the auto feature handle things like this because they don't want to delve deeper into how to take advantage of all the camera's features. Especially when using the Macro setting, the auto focus can be a huge pain. The autofocus mechanism works by picking a point that IT considers the prime target and focuses on that. However, what it picks to focus on is not always the subject. Admittedly, I haven't had my new digital long enough to get comfortable yet with manual control of shutter speed or focal length settings, something every good photographer should have control over. But for the neophyte or beginner, it's not that big a problem as you aren't wasting film and you can review your shot and go back and try again. Most cameras have features to adjust for camera shake or jitter. It can be tough to control this though, even with those features and a tripod is valuable. However, I have tended to repeat shots hand-held because it is so easy and quick to review a shot and try again. I tend to take reasonably good pics and if you go view the photo tours, 'A Place for a New Garden', 'I Think I'm Going Japanese, #1 and #2' and 'Walk Like an Egyptian', you'll see examples where I did not go back and redo a shot that suffered focus problems or jitter problems. For an example of jitter, look at the Golden Head of the Mummy Sarcophagus in 'Walk Like an Egyptian'. That is not a focus problem. It is jitter. Note that in other shots, there is a pane of glass between the camera and the subject and the shots suffer from light reflection off that glass. But OK. So what I'm saying is that the very good device that cameras have built in to control jitter ... does not always do the job. Be aware and use a tripod or be prepared to make several tries if the shot is important to you or you want to make sure your work is good. I've generally found that the digital cameras are extremely flexible and useful, but the old SLR can still do things that digitals can not. When rating digital cameras, a lot of folks condemned the early ones because their controls were hard to finger and they made 'noise'. The newer cameras are very quiet and the control surfaces and interfaces have been much improved. You can find my latest photo tour of South Bay Gardens in the California Gardening Forum. It is called 'China Grove' and covers San Jose's Overfelt Gardens.