A Natural Home

As most of you know, we built a passive solar home or in other words, a natural home. We do not have electric bills and love being off of the grid. One drawback is that we cannot have an air conditioner as it will run down too much of our batteries. So, to compensate, we leave our side doors open to let the breeze flow through the house at night. Living in the country affords us the luxury of doing such things...or so I thought.

Last night at about 2:30 a.m. I heard talking and figured Zack was talking in his sleep again. I got up to go check on him. While walking down the hall I flipped on the hall lights. I found Zack standing at the back of the living room wrapped in his blanket. After asking him why he was up he told me that there was something wrong with Jackie. I couldn't see anything wrong but she was obviously agitated by something. I said to her, "what is it Jackie? Get it." She promptly jumped into the planter bed and started running back and forth and you could tell she was excited about something. She ran about half way down the planter bed and started jumping up and down. For the love, it was 2:30 a.m. and I was tired. Listen dog, if there is something outside, go get it. I rolled my eyes in disgust and noted during mid-eye roll.....

Yep, a raccoon had crawled up one of the wooden beams in our house and was "treed" there by our trusty Jack Russell Terrier. She scared the raccoon out and chasted it into the night but not before I was completely and utterly shocked and freaked out by the thought of how to get rid of this unwelcome guest. I am now a firm believer in having our dog around to get rid of these nastly little pests. Zack, on the other hand, is disappointed he didn't trap it so he has set additional food in his trap in hopes of trapping it. Good luck kiddo.