So this is my happiest sight on the trail cam: a raccoon. Two years ago this would not have been unusual, but it has been a year and a half since the raccoon colony in our woods was wiped out, probably by distemper. It brightens my heart to see them on the cam again.

You know what else likes to eat chickens? Raccoons. And we have a whole family of raccoons that live on the property, and they regularly show up on the trail cam.

So I know raccoons are smart (I did read Ranger Rick as a kid, and even recently with my own kids), but I didn’t know until recently that raccoons can undo latches. And raccoons can tear through chicken wire (chicken wire is really just effective against chickens, everything else can rip it open or crawl through), so we will be using hardware cloth to cover any openings in the coop and will bury it around the base of the coop and runs to keep these critters out. And use complex latches that need two or three steps to open. Phew!