Raccoon Men, continued

Here are some photos of the five baby raccoons that lived in my office last week:

Raccoon Men

On Monday, an army of five baby raccoons moved into my home office, on loan from Chintimini Wildlife Center. I can now definitively answer the question: do raccoons make good pets? No, no, they do not.

But they are damn cute.

They need formula three times a day, and they muck up their cage pretty badly, so it needs cleaning about twice a day. That's OK, it's not like I was going to get any work done in my office this week anyway, right?

Each one is marked with nail polish on the ear so we can tell them apart; at first it was pretty tricky making sure they each get the proper amount at feeding time, but it's getting easier. Ben rigged up an awesome hammock, and we sacrificed one of our mushroom growing logs for Raccoonlandia.

Today they munched on apples and blueberries, along with their dog chow. Tomorrow, I'm going to cut up the watermelon I bought them and share it out, and pick up some pine cones and other toys. There's one female, but the rest are male, so I just call them the RaccoonMen. More photos to come!

Baby Mouse!

One day I'm going to look back at this photo and think: This is how it all started! That day will probably occur sometime next week. Stay tuned.

Marys Peak

Ben and I finally made it up Marys Peak! It's a mountain not too far from Corvallis, but last year the road was closed each time we tried to go up. At 4,097 feet it's sort of a West Coast parallel of Camel's Hump (4,083), so I was expecting a similar peak. Sadly, the top is nothing like Camel's Hump; it's quite developed, with a huge fence and cell towers and right now the top essentially looks like a grassy field, complete with picnic table. The hike was nice, but the peak cannot compare. I'm hoping that the "real" mountains out in the Cascades will look a bit more dramatic!

The hike itself was lovely. The trillium are blooming, the morels are out but hiding, and I found a pair of gigantic sunglasses on the trail:

Afterwards, we headed to the Woodsman, a Thai restaurant/American bar with logging decor (think lots of saws). They have the most generous plates of fried tofu I've ever seen. An excellent day, but Ben can keep the sunglasses. Maybe elsewhere I will find some morels...

Dancin' Strawberry Man

It's not every day that you find a dancing strawberry man in your strawberries:

I went looking for morels today with Ben, but we didn't find any. Still, beautiful weather and a nice walk at Luckiamute. I didn't take any photos of that, but I do have a picture of me and Tiny Weasel taking a nap:

That's all for now.

Good Day for Birds!

Today Ben and I hiked up Dan's Trail in Corvallis. We didn't see many other hikers, but we did see a grey jay and a northern flicker. The grey jay looked a bit like an overgrown chickadee; at first I thought it was a shrike. It didn't look much like the grey jays out East!

I'm still only about 80% certain this is a grey jay.

Hmm.

Happy Spring!

It's starting to get nice out again, so that means it's time to start updating my blog with good-weather things. Today I picked up some strawberries from the farmers' market, a sign that warm weather is here to stay. Ben and I also explored Opal Creek Wilderness a couple weekends ago with Katie and her friend Susan.
Here I am with Ben, riding through the woods on a mining cart. Good times.