Flying squirrel and pumpkin guts

Since our daughter is too old to dress up for Halloween any more and our house is so rural that we don't get any trick-or-treaters at the door, the only tradition left is carving the pumpkins for the front porch. I must confess that I only participate in eating the roasted seeds after all the work is done. This year I saved a little of the pumpkin goo for camera trap bait. I finally remembered to take it out of the fridge and set it out early this week.

When I got to the camera set this evening, I was first excited to see that pile of pumpkin guts had been ravaged but then dismayed to see the camera askew and covered in mud. I sighed inwardly. Ten photos were registered, but how many of them would be blurred by a muddy lens? I trudged back to the house with the certainty that some critter had ruined another set...



Raccoon
(Seneca Falls, NY 11/12)

 The first few photos were incidental to the bait. An eastern cottontail hopped by. The neighbors cat made an appearance. And then the raccoon appeared. It doesn't seem to be honed in on the pumpkin at first. But with that nose to the ground, it won't take be long before it finds the prize.












Raccoon
(Seneca Falls, NY 11/12)

A minute later, the coon finds the bait. He spends a minute there and then heads back on his original track.

This was the last clear photo. "Clearly" this was the culprit. I have had coons climb my cameras before but this one really sent the camera at an angle. The camera was now pointed at some random spot on the ground rather than y precious pile of putrid pumpkin. Sigh....

Flying squirrel sp.
(Seneca Falls, NY 11/12)

Which is all to say that the next photo was all the sweeter for the luck involved. FLYING SQUIRREL!!! :) And I never would have gotten this capture without the coon tilting the camera (Look how far from center the pumpkin bait is now!). He posed nicely between the smudges of mud. I couldn't have asked for a better result from the pumpkin guts experiment. In a word: "gourdgeous"