I know that summer officially starts on 21 June, but it is already here, and it definitely feels like it. Temperatures are in high 20s Celsius, grass is growing with the speed of light (almost) and birds are singing their hearts out. I pay attention to their songs; July is only around the corner when they stop singing. I especially love night chorus of nightingales and owls and who knows who else. I love birds but am not very good with recognising their songs. It is incredibly quiet at night here and listening to them singing in the darkness feels very mystical.
Back to earth and practicalities – we had enormous number of ticks recently. They multiply in wet weather, but like it was last summer dry weather makes hinders their activity. I must google where they go in hot weather. Maybe underground, where they wait for cooler temperatures. I still find one on my dogs from time to time, but thankfully they stopped running on me. I found a few small ones doing their ticklish walk on my arms, which thankfully is easy to notice. I never had a tick embedded in my skin.
Our lake is getting busy with both tourists and local moms and their kids coming in early afternoons for a swim. People eat their dinner here about 3pm, so swimming happens before that. I did not check yet if the water is warm enough, but my Linus swims each time we get anywhere close to the lake, which tells me the water is ok.
I had a lovely visitor at home yesterday. It wasn’t so lovely for him. I heard strange screams in my garden and dogs were very loud. It turned out a baby raccoon was mauled by the dog next door and climbed over the fence to our garden. Luckily, my dogs are not blood thirsty beasts and they bark squeaky little barks when encountering representatives of the local wildlife. I locked them inside the house, asked children next door to lock their dog and put a thick autumn jacket and garden gloves on, so the little creature didn’t scratch me. I covered him with a towel (watching rescue videos of scared dogs being caught paid off) and put him in an apple crate. I was completely clueless what animal it was. Looked like a raccoon, but raccoons don’t live in Europe, I thought. I googled the information and it turned out that they live in Germany. They were brought here in 1920s to fur farms and after the WWII were let go into wilderness. There are about 1 million of them and they are considered invasive species. One cannot keep them or let them back to the wild. I established with the help of the internet that the baby was about 8 weeks old and what he needed to eat and raced to the local Penny to get a baby formula and raw chicken breasts. Brought the food back and used the bird feeding syringe (yes, I have it) to squirt some milk in the little one’s mouth, which at the beginning didn’t go very well. He was growling at me a bit when I touched him with the syringe, but once he understood that the warm food comes from it, he calmed down and started to lick. He loved raw chicken covered in milk too and I started to worry that he ate too much, but he just relaxed and fell asleep. I fed him again in 4 hours and added strawberry to his chicken. He ate some of it too, but chicken and milk were his favourite. While he was sleeping, I was searching the internet for local wildlife rescues which seem to not exist in this area. I found a raccoon rescue group on Facebook, whose members are located mostly in western and central Germany and someone from it pointed me onto someone who knows someone else etc. Anyway, that night I took the little one to a lady who took him to a person who already has two baby raccoons in her rescue and where “my” little one will live from now on. The outcome is both sad and happy. He will be safe, his wounds will be taken care of, but he will never know freedom. I was told by a few rescuers I spoke with, that I shouldn’t give him baby formula because they have runs afterwards, but the formula chosen by me kept his tummy fine. If anyone, ever, finds a baby raccoon and there is no goat milk or a baby cat formula lying around at your home, Bebivita Folgemilch nach dem 6 monat is the one to get. My French friend named him Ricky and the rescue agreed to keep the name.
Lakehaus Lebehn 