The first week of the new school trimester has come and gone and I am taking a drawing class as well as my usual project classes (Math, Earth Science, English literature, and Advanced Journalism). They are called "project classes" because many of these subjects are combined together in a single project that can overlap between the different classes. For example, last semester my Mayan project earned me credit for my History class as well as credit in English (writing) because I wrote an analysis of their alphabet system and talked about how they recorded their historical stories. I also am still trying to earn credit in Math because I wrote a seperate report on the Mayan number system and how they developed different cyclical calenders to keep track of time. I am not sure it is enough however because Math has to specifically involve our own current system like Algebra. I guess I am just trying to avoid having to take more Math classes because I dislike it.

Dad discovered Raccoons in our barn that have been making a mess of our garbage at night and spent all weekend (with my reluctant help) trying to trap them. Dad says he thinks he has seen a mother with large nipples which means she probably has a litter somewhere in the barn and is trying to feed herself enough because she is probably still nursing. I decided to find out more about raccoons so I looked on the computer to see if they as harmful as my Dad says and how best to deal with them. Raccoons are "nocturnal" which means they come out at night, and they are often thought by many people to carrie rabies, which is a disease that humans can get that can be deadly, but they rarely get rabies and instead can get canine distemper which has similar symptoms to rabies. Distemper can effect dogs, but not people so it is probably best to catch the raccoons and move them somewhere else, but Dad wanted to catch them and kill them. I didn't like that idea and told Dad so, but he said "it has to be done".
Dad set up the cage in the lower part of the back barn and put a cracker with peanut butter on it in a cage (trap) on Friday night. I was hoping to get up early on Saturday to see if the mother raccoon was in the cage, but I guess Dad put the cracker only part of the way in to make the raccoon "comfortable" and so it would continue to come back. Raccoons are one of the smartest animals and therefore you have to take time to be able to "outwit" them into eventually taking the cracker at the end of the cage past the "trigger plate".
More about raccoons...
Female raccoons usually have an average of four babies in a litter and pregnancy usually lasts for nine weeks and cubs are born in the Spring (like most animals). The young begin to accompany their mother on excursions by early June, but until then they are dependent on the mother's milk. They have had to adapt to changing habitat because of Humans and often make homes out of abandoned buildings, old beaver lodges, car bodies, wood piles, abandoned badger and coyote dens, attics, chimneys, and hay stacks. The hay stack is probably where they are living in our barn. Many raccoons are killed because people like their fur and can sell it for a lot of money and some people even eat the raccoon because they taste good, although I have never eaten one.
Raccoons can be driven out of chimneys and other locations by placing a flashing light near the entry to their den and by turning on a talk radio station and putting the radio near by. Spraying garbage with ammonia will also keep the raccoons out of the garbage, especially if the lid is fastened tightly. I also read that if you leave a sandwich with peanut butter mixed with hot sauce that when the raccoons eat it, it will be upset enough to leave the area thinking that all the food there will taste like that. I guess the peanut butter hides the smell of the hot sauce. I heard it can get rid of bears also.
I told all this to Dad and I said that I don't want him to kill the mother because then the babies will die too and we should try some of the things I read about first. He reluctantly agreed (thats twice I have used my new word "reluctant") and we decided to drive them out with sports talk radio at night and Rush Limbaugh during the day, which Mom said "would drive anyone away". So far, as of tonight, it hasn't worked yet, but the website said to give a mother and her cubs up to a week to relocate. If that doesn't work than we might have to try the "peanut butter and chili" sandwich.
"Reluctant" means "unwilling and hesitant; disinclined" and an example is "I am reluctant to kill anything as cute as a raccoon".