Thief in the Night

We have an outside cat that I wrote about in my post "A Cat and his Nip" on May 21, 2011.  He is well fed because we have a self-feeder for him that we keep out on our back patio.   One morning a while back, Tom went out to find the feeder completely empty and turned over.  He had suspected for some time that "something" other than Marmaduke (the cat) had been dining there.  We have seen a couple of other cats around, possibly cats belonging to neighbors or maybe feral cats.  So, we decided to setup our wildlife camera out there and see if we could capture the culprit(s) in the act.  Over the period of several nights, here is what we found.

First, was a picture of one of the neighbor/feral cats that I mentioned above.

 Next, was a picture of a opossum.

And, finally, was a raccoon.

So, as it turned out, we were feeding quite a variety of wildlife.  Tom decided it was time to put a stop to this "restaurant" business we had inadvertantly started.  So, he started bringing the feeder in at night.  All went well with this new process for a couple of days.

Then, one morning he went out to the porch that is just outside our laundry room door to find this.

Absent the easy food provided by the self-feeder, the wildlife had gone looking for other easy meals and found our dog food (in the red can) and a sack of forgotten pecans we had picked up last fall.  What a mess!  I was amazed that any of the creatures above could actually take the lid off the can of dog food.  Sometimes, I have trouble getting it off!

So, I moved the camera around to this porch and caught the culprit on film.

The next morning, Lizzy (our beagle) and I went out to clean up this mess and Lizzy had a big time smelling where the thief had been.

I've heard raccoons can be quite destructive.  So, needless to say, the old pecans have been thrown out and the dog food has been brought inside!