Home Invasion!

First, here's something that I made yesterday. A colourful Churn Dash, for the lovely Felicity.  We'll see each other tonight at the VMQG meeting, so I figured I might as well save a couple bucks postage and hand-deliver her block!

We're in the Stash Trad virtual quilting bee, where each month we make a traditional block with modern fabrics from our own stash, according to the queen bee's specs. I think Felicity is going to end up with a fabulously fun quilt. The Churn Dash is one of my all time fav traditional blocks.

And now, a story.

We had some excitement chez Poppyprint at 6:00 a.m. this morning. I awoke to a strange, yet familiar sound. Like a box of lego being dumped out on the carpet. Our window was open, so at first I thought maybe it was outside. Then I heard the unmistakable click-click of the dog door flap. Suddenly I was wide awake and realized the first sound was the large bin of dog food tipping over. ALERT! ALERT! RACCOON IN THE KITCHEN!!!  Our 12 pounds of pain-in-the-ass miniature dachshund sleeps in a basket in the corner of our room and I think he and I realized what was going on at precisely the same time. He charged down the stairs ahead of me in full panicky growl-mode, but stopped short of turning the corner into the kitchen when I gave him a stern NO (he suffered a 2:00 a.m. raccoon-attack two years ago in our backyard after letting himself out for a pee).  I am sure the smell is all too familiar to him and while he was anxious to protect his house, I'm sure he wasn't keen to repeat that painful night right there in the kitchen!  Luckily,  all that was left of our cheeky intruder was grass on the kitchen floor and muddy footprints all over the dog food bin.  I guess we'll have to keep the dog door covered at night now.  I'm certain this is the same varmint who was crapping in our back yard every night for a week recently. Euw.

Coupled with a crow robbing another crow's nest and actually eating a juvenile bird on my front lawn yesterday (double EUWWWWW!), it's a bad episode of Wild Kingdom going on right here! In the fall, we had to cover the slope in our front yard with chicken wire to prevent the skunks from digging dens every night. It's a takeover, people! 

It won't be long till the black bears are wandering our street at dusk. I predict they'll be down in a few weeks once some berries are in. Anyone up for a visit to the wilds of North Vancouver?