One of the perils among others to live in the wooded area is that we encounter or have to live with pesty animals. The raccoon (Tanuki, perhaps)  in particular with no obvious predators except humans  proliferates in this area. This fella, one night,  came over and ate all baby cardinals. (stories are on previous page)  Well, I declared war against this pesty raccoon. I made a simple wire cage with a trapping mechanism using a bait of bread with honey, and a small piece of fish. What I caught was this infamous raccoon  in the backyard.  Around 10:30 pm on Aug. 11, 2002, this fella entered into the cage hoping to have some nice meal of fish and bread with honey. Wahahahaha, he made a serious mistake as you see in those thumbnail pics. Pics tell what a raccoon looks like. Cute looking with a very nice tail. Frontier man, Daniel Boone wore a hat with a raccoon tail on the TV show. But raccoons are vicious, and they can inflict serious bites if threatened.  Thought about making some raccoon stew or something, but Sally objected with that idea. We took him out of the city and released him.   Click the pics to enlarge.

I planted 6 tomato stalks just for the heck of it. So far so good, except I saw squirrels picking some of the larger tomatoes while they are green. Oh, well, what can I say. The plant far right on the bottom row is Japanese Shiso or beefsteak plant. Found it while walking, and I transplanted it.