This is one of the raccoons I saw in my yard in Virginia.

Raccoons

When I lived in Virginia I had lots of raccoons come into my back yard. One time my mom followed one around with a video camera for a long time.
Now I live in Texas. When I lived in Austin, I put pans of food out in my back yard for the birds and other critters. Three young raccoons would come often to eat. One of them was smaller than the other two, and the bigger ones would not let it eat. So, it backed into the pans to make them move. But once I put fruit juice in the pans and its tail got all sticky. I gave the raccoons some old frozen pizza one time. I didn't realize it had jalapenos on it until I saw them furiously washing their mouths out.

My First Birdies

I got some cute little Americauna chicks and French guinea keets on the 1st of March. I fed them a mix of organic corn meal, kelp, and grit. I also fed them grated cheese and mashed hard boiled eggs, plus any bugs I can catch. They are so cute! I named one of them Goldie. He is yellow with a golden head. He is a "wheaten" Americauna rooster. He is very tame. When they were about six weeks old, I added ground up spelt and sunflower seeds to they're food, and some millet. On the forth of march one died : ( I named one Patch. It looked a lot like the chick that died. When I stopped feeding them corn meal. Some other chicks that I named are Earmuff, Freckles, Snow Flake, Teriyaki, Twisty, Beauty, Squishy, Stripe, Friendly, Collar, Browny, and Blacky. Squishy got squished. Twisty has a twisted beak. Stripe and Twisty used to look the same, but Stripe is about twice as big as Twisty because Twisty can not eat enough because of his twisted beak. Friendly is at the bottom of the pecking order. Collar is at the top of the pecking order. I have read that guineas do not scratch, but some of my guineas seem to think they're chickens. They scratch like chickens! Maybe it's because they all grew up together.

Here is my sweet little honey pie. 

I Got a New Gerbil!

On the Twenty-Fifth of November, I got a new gerbil. Her name is Honey. (Honey's coloration is called light yellow fox.) She is honey colored with pink eyes. I had to get another Cage so I could introduce Honey to Peanut. I kept Switching them back and forth between the two cages, so they could get used to each other's smell. I started putting them in tubes, putting one in one tube and the other in another tube and holding the tubes next to each other so the gerbils could touch noses. After a while I started letting them go back and forth in between the tubes. Then I put them in a play area together. I had a little container that I used to cover one of them if they started to fight. I gradually let them play together longer and longer. Finally they were going to be together for three hours. They were fighting a lot. I put in some shredded paper and they stopped fighting. They were too busy having fun to fight. That same day I left them together in one cage for the first time. I put in two cardboard nest boxes so they would each have a place to sleep. Peanut would Not let Honey come into "her" nest box. When Honey was finally asleep in the other box, Peanut jumped on top of it and started thumping on it and woke up Honey! What a rascal!

More About Gerbils

On the eleventh of November 2005, Sunflower got sick. She was acting very strange. She couldn't jump, she was keeping her eyes closed, and was not eating. When she tried to jump up on top of her nest box, her legs got stiff and she fell over backwards. She wouldn't even eat her favorite food, which was pumpkin seeds. She was spending most of her time hiding in her nest, drinking, and chewing on her mineral wheel. She stayed like that for three days. Then she got better for a week. On the twenty-first, she died. :'(

Here is Peanut.  

Here are Sunflower and Peanut, runing on the runing wheel. 

Here is Sunflower. She is eating some hay.