Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here tonight to bring you a different sort of post. You may remember me from such posts as “The Filter (An Interlude)”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Looking at the canal, which has water in it again. The water has been turned on and off so many times now we haven’t been able to keep track.
I think you can also tell that it snowed here.
On my last couple of walks, the guy I live with has told me not to stop and stare into the darkness, because he said it kind of creeps him out.
Yesterday evening I stopped on the canal road and stared and stared.
Then when I finally started on my walk again we heard branches breaking. The guy I live with said that hearing branches break in the dark was too “Blair Witch” for him (I didn’t know what he meant), but we bravely kept on going.
So I did it again this evening. Stared and stared. I have better night vision than he does.
The guy I live with shone his headlamp into the field and this is what we saw. A pair of glowing eyes in that dark area.
The guy I live with said he was not thrilled seeing eyes glowing in the dark, but said it was probably a raccoon.
Or maybe it was something else.
I guess we’ll never know.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me on the rearranged couch, safe from glowing eyes.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Maybe it was a kitty.
I don’t think it was. Probably a raccoon.
well, ‘probably’, . . . but it ‘could’ have been a kitty, . . . or a lion, or a tiger, or a bear, . . . or even Sasquatch!
No, it turned out to be a raccoon.
Oh, well, . . . that is not as much fun.
Raccoons are pretty interesting, and fun to chase out of the yard, even though the guy I live with says they have sharp teeth.
They’re watching you, those eyes in the field!
The guy I live with decided it was a raccoon. We’ve just started seeing them again after several years.
There was a whole family of them living next door for a while; they would climb onto the shed roof, so the guy I live with laid some old fence pickets from the shed roof to the fence, so they could escape when I showed up, with my deadly viciousness.
Mee-yow this iss an innterestin post Mani an Guy!! HURRAH fore water inn canal. An wee have snow like youss’ due today. Iss chilley an windy…..BBRRRR! Wee hope it was jsut a Raccoon out there inn THE dark. Mani wee nose you are feerce an will purrtect Guy so wee not wurried…
Yore fotoss are grate. THE couch one iss so cute ’cause this iss how wee feel with Winter closin inn 😉 ***purrss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. The water in the canal has stopped again. We’ve never seen it so turned on and off before.
We’re now pretty sure the eyes belonged to a raccoon, but it was kind of scary.
THE canal water iss stopped again??? Weerd rite Mani?? On/Off…On/Off…….so odd…..
Wee hope it was a Raccoon an not a meen Coyote!
I think it’s off for good, now, until next spring. There used to be farmhouses to the north of the canal, and back in those days (I think the canal was dug in the 1880s), the water probably flowed until about now, too, or whenever the farmers didn’t need it any more.
Pretty sure it wasn’t a coyote; I’ve seen their glowing eyes come right at me, but I got all vicious and deadly, to protect the guy I live with.
Mee can see you all vishuss an feerce an purrtectin Guy!!! Yore THE best Mani!
An wee hope THE water iss off an all iss guud there….
Thanks. I try to be as tough as possible.
The water is still flowing, a little, but there’s ice in the canal, too, because the bottom of the canal is in shade now.
Mee betss you are furry feerce Mani….bee carefull tho’. Wee mot want anything to ahppen to eether you or Guy!
We have a very Joe Cool type raccoon that ambles around the yard. Our dogs act like it is invisible which has to be a sign of intelligence on their part since I’m sure he could whip both of them without breaking a sweat. The rearranged couch looks wonderfully comfortable.
Ceci
I haven’t seen a raccoon in my yard for a long time.
I get criticized for rearranging the couch, but I’ve also heard that other purebred border collies who lived here did the same thing.
The foam rubber, what’s left of it, in the cushions, is about fifty years old, which is why there are all these blankets and things covering the couch. The guy I live with said that new couch cushions, ones which would actually fit, would cost about seven hundred dollars and so he said the heck with that.
The couch is super comfortable, even if it is old and very creaky. We call it rattan, but only parts of it are. The guy I live with sometimes takes afternoon naps on it, unless I’ve gotten there first, in which case he sleeps on the floor next to me.
It’s almost like the couch, which was made in the Philippines about 1935 (as were the chairs and the table next to the couch), was really intended for purebred border collies to sleep on.
‘Who knows what lurks in the dark?’ was the opening line to a scary tv show I watched when I was a kid. Cracking sounds in the dark can certainly creep you out. We don’t have raccoons thank goodness but we do have what seems to be a large family of coyotes living in the cooley below us. Their maniac calls late in the evening can be a little disconcerting too. Your couch looks comfey but it would be nice if you shared it with the guy you live with. The floor can’t be that comfortable for him.
I don’t know why we haven’t seen raccoons in such a long while, but they’re back.
We used to have lots of coyotes here, and there are videos of them howling in the field, but they’re not so common as they used to be.
The guy I live with is okay sleeping on the living room floor, if I’m on the couch. When I was little we could both sleep on the couch.