Happy Fourth!
And my apologies for forgetting to say that in last night’s post. Yesterday shouted reminders that I do, in fact, have lupus, brainstem no less, and it was a distraction.
Today was better.
Learned something new today. To quote Wikipedia (slightly shortened):
“The most important sense for the raccoon is its sense of touch.[52] Almost two-thirds of the area responsible for sensory perception in the raccoon’s cerebral cortex is specialized for the interpretation of tactile impulses, more than in any other studied animal.[56] They are able to identify objects before touching them with vibrissae located above their sharp, nonretractable claws.[57] The raccoon’s paws lack an opposable thumb and thus it does not have the agility of the hands of primates.”
Whiskers on their paws? Curious. And they show a picture of one up in an apple tree. Bingo.
The paws on ours seem pretty agile to me; the little Tarzan both charmed and aggravated by figuring out how to pull the clamshells apart at the center to raid the apples. There were two clamshells that were still on the tree, still closed shut–empty. And bent open at the middle just enough for me to picture the thing going Yow! as it snapped to on its paws–but it did it again.
The others were left alone so far.
And so last night I experimented: I taped the clamshells shut at the center with clear shipping tape.
So far so good.
After checking on them tonight, I ate my very first homegrown blueberry ever, and although it was supposed to be a small wild blueberry and I expected tart, it was sweet and it was good; our heat wave probably added to the sugar content.
The critters haven’t discovered those yet.
(Edited to show off and add a link to my nephew, one of my sister Anne’s boys, playing a composition of his.)