I guess if it's tamed, it's not true, but I've heard the same thing about the wild ones. Lynn Debra wrote: I've never seen a raccoon out and about during the day.? I thought this was a bad thing, as raccoons are mostly nocturnal? The conventional wisdom around here says that if you see a raccoon out during the day, it's probably sick.? Not true?

May I contribute to the Animals in our Backyards series? All this talk of backyards finally made me aware that I have a backyard, too. It's not very big as backyards go; but there is a fairly large pond about thirty feet from my patio. This pond attracts a lot of birds; I don't mean blackbirds and crows, although there are some of those. I mean great blue herons and gray herons and ibises and anhangas, and others I can't identify. We can also see two to four big, and not so big, sandhill cranes strutting up and down our street at times, so tame that you can walk up to them. Of course, that's our frontyard, so they don't count. My son-in-law, two doors up, is really into birdwatching. He has a camera with a tripod, binoculars, and a bird book. I'm what you might call a casual watcher. The pond contains lots of fish, which attract the birds. They wade in the pond, grabbing and eating the fish. After they have fed, they come out on the bank and spread their wings to dry; before they can fly away. There is something else in the pond, an alligator, about four feet long. We see him/her lying on the bank, sunning him/herself. I don't see how he/she and all those birds live on the fish in that pond. They must be very prolific fish. My wife is afraid that the alligator will eat our cat; so she won't let me let the cat out on the patio unless I am out there with her. I can see the headlines: Ninety-one Year Old Man Saves Cat From Alligator. Richard Emlin Reed Wesley Chapel, FL