Collateral Damage

Hard times everywhere.  Japan can hardly figure out which of its calamities to deal with first; the U.S. (joined by Canada!) seems to be bombing yet another Middle-Eastern country.  Not to mention our back yard.

Our garden/yard (it's not a yard in the sense of grass and a fence, but not quite a garden in the sense of planned beds) is  like a forest with flowers here and there, intermingled with the ordinary northwestern forest ground cloth of ferns and Oregon grape and such like.  It's big enough to require paths, so over the years I have enlisted various children and grandchildren to help me in the construction of several interconnected pathways.  Each pathway--about 24 inches wide) has either stones or bricks on each side for delineation.  The bricks are set down into the ground a couple of inches and the stones stack above ground.  In between, in the pathway itself, there is a mixture of pecan shells and chopped bark/branch material.  It's all very nice, very orderly, very picturesque.  The paths don't require much maintenance except that the bark mulch has to be replaced every so often.  And the pecan shells get added to as I shell the pecans that my New Mexico daughter kindly sends me each year.  If I live long enough and if her pecan tree lives long enough, we'll be knee deep in pecan shells eventually.

However, Saturday night (the night of the super moon), the raccoons appeared in the night and went lunatic, presumably in response to the moon.  They dug bricks and stones up and out and just through them around for a distance of about 8-10 feet.  They do dig around here and there throughout the year and particularly in the winter, but they have never done this kind of damage.  I don't think they were just frolicking.  I suppose they were looking for grubs or something underneath the bricks.  But, Please!  It's like an invasion or something.  Although, I suppose I'm just experiencing collateral damage to the raccoons vastly more important agenda.