There’s a drain pipe that runs through my neighborhood, from the houses at the highest point, down through several yards to the lowest. I think it may come out by the river, but don’t know for sure. An iron grate in my backyard covers an intersection of some of those pipes, and rustling noises have been coming from it for a while. Until a week ago, I’d never heard any vocalizations or smelled skunk or anything else to give me a clue as to what’s down there. There was a growl last week, WAY lower than any rat could make. So I decided it was probably raccoons, and guess what? There are at least 2:

I bought a motion detection camera and SD card off Amazon during their Prime sale for about $35. This is within the first hour of setting it up. It has infared, so I bet we’ll see more tonight when they’re more active.

The problem is their rustling around down there gets the dogs stirred up and barking at the sounds. We get up by 4 AM – I CAN’T have them barking at that time of the morning. For now I’ve got a fence set up around it so they can’t get too close. There’s NO WAY the raccoons can come up through the grate. I guess I’ll alert animal control, but at least I know now. Mystery solved.

I recently finished a new diamond dotz canvas and have it hung in probably the worst location in the house as far as lighting, but I wanted this one where I could see it:

I was just mesmerized by this one in the catalog and had to get it. It turned out great, but there’s a lot of light in here, so it’s kind of hard to see during the day. But I don’t care. 😁

Dropped off my quilt yesterday for the machine quilting step, should be back in a couple of weeks and then I’ll be able to put on the binding and get that one hung!

D&D got a bit interesting last night. It’s possible for the character you are playing to die in the game. Like, completely dead, time to create a new character. Well, for the second time in 16 years one of our player’s character died in a battle. Fortunately he literally stated a couple minutes earlier that he was debating switching to a different character. So when the death happened, even though we came up with a couple of ways to bring him back, he said “nope” and now the character’s twin brother (who looks just like the one who died and even has the same name) will be joining us next week! 😆

Happy Friday everyone! Hugs!