The Amity Forest continues to delight. This buck has started hanging around our house. For those of you who have never seen a White-Tailed Deer “In Velvet”, look at his antlers. Within a month or so, this deer will wear the “fuzz” off its antlers, and he will look more like you expect.

From Science.Com: “When you see deer with fuzzy antlers, you are seeing a deer in velvet. That velvet provides nutrition and growth to deer antlers. This special tissue is a type of skin, loaded with blood vessels and nerves, that regenerates every year.”

While taking a break this afternoon I suddenly noticed motion in the white pine above our bird feeders. Apparently after last night’s big rain and thunderstorm a local raccoon family decided to look for better accommodations.  Our white pine has one section that is hollow. It was fun watching the family move in, but they may have a rude awakening tonight. Both raccoons and owls are nocturnal, and my Great Horned Owl family of five hunts in my yard every night starting at 10 pm.

While Hoot may be to small and inexperienced yet to catch a raccoon, either parent owl would find catching a raccoon, particularly the babies not much of a problem. It will be interesting to see what evolves. There are definitely more than two raccoons in the tree (two seen in the video).

Raccoons move In to hollow White Pine

Count the noses! (I do not know the total count is of raccoons)

Raccoon Movie-In … the Movie (link for email subscribers)