rac·coon also ra·coon (r²-k›n“) 1. A carnivorous North American mammal (Procyon lotor) having grayish-brown fur, black masklike facial markings, and a black-ringed bushy tail.

Growing up in Europe, I've always had this image in my head of raccoons being these cute, cuddly, lovable creatures - sweet miniature-bears that you'd encounter frolicking on the banks of a river, busily washing a crawdad or fish before eating it. What nice and clean animals! Or at least that's Marlin Perkins, Marty Stouffer and Walt Disney would have you believe.

Recently, however, I've come to know a quite different side of them.
A rather tenacious, mean, and threatening side, that is.

For the past 4 weeks, a band of raccoons (or more precisely, a mother raccoon with her 4 young) has been terrorizing my house. They enter the laundry room through the cat door, eat all the cat food (or attempt to anyway), and only reluctantly leave, in the meanwhile scaring the crap out of my cats - and yes - me.

Because Mama Raccoon isn't taking any shit from anybody. I approach her and she turns, puts herself up on her back legs, glowers at me with her beady eyes, flashes her teeth and growls and hisses. Of course I know that she is only protecting her young, and I can't fault her for it - but hell, not in my house!

So I've taken to getting home and gathering my reluctant cats as soon as night falls, close up the cat door, and try to ignore the rustling and scratching outside my house.

I've also taken counter measures: at first there were the mothballs, strategically placed near the cat door (raccoons supposedly hate the smell of ammonia). Then came the shouting and yelling, combined with wild fire from my BB gun. But they didn't even flinch when a BB hit them nor really were bothered by my noises.

Yesterday then, I picked up some Cougar Urine from the Army/Hunting store and sprinkled it around the house - raccoons are supposed to be terrified of cougars and run at even the slightest hint of their No. 1 predator. Not *these* raccoons however. I watched them climb rather carefree around the very tree I had applied the cougar scent to.

So that really only left me with one immediate solution: the wrist-rocket. Sure, they didn't appreciate having filbert-sized gravel hurled at them with great speed and force - but they also didn't seem too bothered by it. Mostly, they just shrugged them off and waddled back into the night.

What now, you ask? I suppose I will have to trap and relocate them now. Not something I look forward to. But hey - if any alert readers have any other ideas, leave 'em in the comments. Why? Because you can.

Boy - August 29th will be here sooner than I know. And much sooner than I expected.

suppose in some cosmic way, it's all going to work out the way it should have all along - and in the very least, I will experience the theme of "radical self reliance" up close and personal and maybe be a better person for it. After all, this isn't just a camping trip to the desert.

In addition to that, I just found that I actually have to register as press in order to bring my camera to the event and be able to publish the resulting images to more than just my friends and family (for example to this website). As the BM staff puts it: If you are shooting still photography for any reason other than to show your friends and family, you must register, in advance of the event, with the Media Team. One more hurdle. Sigh.

If alert readers have any wisdom to contribute to this virgin BM participant, by all means - fire away (like - seriously - do I really need *rebar* for tent stakes? Or will 10 inch-deep steele stakes do?) And where's a good place to camp in the overall scheme of things?

So much to plan - so little time.

Sometimes I get the hankering to change things up a bit, mix 'em real good, make it all new and fresh.

The old design for this blog was starting to really get to me. Plus - the url was rather obscure (simone.seeto.com), and there was no syndication option with Zope, the little open source program I was using to publish my blog since its inception. The call from readers for an RSS feed became louder and louder as time went by and so - not being able to ignore the advances in technology any longer - I finally caved in and decided to totally revamp this site.
So folks - here's your RSS feed for this site.

I also thought - while I'm at it, I might as well register a more coherent domain name (onthebrightside.net - yepp, the .com version is a site selling lamps...), and move the hosting from my good friend Luke's server in Toronto to something a bit more local.

Hence - what you see right now. Most of the old content is still hooked into the old design (ok, everything but the blog page), but I promise that will change as time becomes available to fiddle with the new look.

I hope people will enjoy the new design and be glad about the fact, that they really don't have to see it since I know they will just suck down the content via RSS anyway ... But for those of you who could hardly hold your opionated tongues, yes, you can finally comment on my posts. Happy now?