The Barking Dog Alert

Yesterday while Dee worked a few hours, I did some re-arranging of the furniture in the basement. Later we did a little shopping at Costco and she wanted to see some baby items at Baby's R Us. We had lunch at the Jade Garden (Chinese) where she likes the scallops. It is a nice quiet place that we've been to before.

Later we went out again to Barnes and Nobel to look at some of their books and magazines. On the way home we decided to use the hot tub since it was still 50 degrees out. As we went onto the deck, Bonz thought he'd smelled the neighbor's cat and started looking for him in the corner by the deck trunk. We left him on the deck and went down to the hot tub. We'd just taken the cover off of it and settled into a nice hot bubbly when Bonz started barking loudly up on the deck. He wouldn't stop, so I got out of the hot tub and proceeded up the steps to the deck.

Lo and behold, there was a large raccoon perched on the top of the deck divider wall about 8 feet above Bonz looking down at him. He was positioned so that I couldn't walk by him with out the possibility that he would jump toward me, so I stayed on the steps and reached through the railing and called Bonz over to me. When he came, I took hold of his collar and he calmed down. Then Dee took hold of him while I went around to the front of the house and used the car garage opener to get back into the house. When I opened the house door to the deck, Bonz ran to me in the house. I then proceeded back around the house to the deck and Dee and I put the cover back on the hot tub and walked around the house to the front door together. Whew! So much for a restful night in the hot tub. LOL

Later, I check with my flash light and saw that the raccoon was still out there and he'd settled in for the night (so it appeared) still on top of the wall divider, but up against the house with his chin resting on the divider.

this morning I saw he was gone, so I let Bonz out, and he ran onto the deck sniffing around and looking for the critter, but to no avail.