I think I have to stop feeding the birds

I LOVE birds and love having the bird feeders outside my window, but they are having some unfortunately side effects.

Namely…

Squirrels, chipmunks, and raccoons.

The squirrels and chipmunks were cute, and are also fun to watch and photograph, but their population is exploding. Monty is driven right squirrely (literally) watching and chasing them as they run across the lawn, driveway, porch, bbq grill, and window ledge.

Now there has been a raccoon visiting every night and it is really affecting our sleep.

Mr. or Mrs. Coon swings by around dusk and stays around for a few hours. First he jumps up to grab the bottom of the sunflower seed feeders, then hangs off of them until they tip open, spilling a meal for himself. After he’s gorged himself on sunflower seeds, he somehow gets onto the deck and knocks the green compost bin over. Usually he is good enough to knock it over in such a way that the latch opens up and he spills rotting food all over the deck.

Oh, did I mention that Monty barks during all of this, keeping us up?

The other night Monty got a heads up on the raccoon and decided to sleep by the patio door instead of upstairs beside our bed. At 2:12am I woke up to him whining and squealing and throwing himself into the glass door repeatedly while the raccoon ate his dessert of expired eggs.

This morning after another night of yelling at Monty to stop barking at the raccoon, I groggily got up to see a skunk wandering around our front lawn, with a big fat belly. Looks like it might have been out there for awhile filling up on grubs and digging up the mossy side of the lawn.

We were just outside for a few hours moving last year’s load of firewood over to the woodshed, and stacking it for next winter. Before I came in, I took down the sunflower seed feeders and hid them in my car for the night.

Now will all the squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, and skunks break into the car? Or break into the house to teach us a lesson?

Or will we actually get a complete night’s sleep for the first time in 2 weeks?

==Update==
We slept! All night! No barking!
Monty slept by the patio door again, but we hid the compost bin inside another garbage can. 🙂