Something unsettling happened last night. You may read this and think ‘Oh you, now you’re being silly’, but this really happened.
I left the shop around midnight after a long day working on our contest entry and turned from McKinley onto 7th/99 to head east towards home. For anyone outside of town, this is the far west side of Eugene and I live in the far east side of Springfield. There are two towns between where I was and where I live.
Due to massive road construction, the four lane road is currently a single lane with a one foot drop-off (~1/3 meter for my civilized friends) into rock on one side and a sidewalk on the other. The street lights for this stretch were out, so this stretch was very dark.
As I accelerated, I noticed a dark shape on the road ahead of me. I began to slow and as I did so, I picked up three more shapes next to it. I rolled to a stop about 20 feet away from a group of four… raccoons. They had stopped in the road and were staring at me.
Raccoons.
After a moment, they backed off the road as if to say ‘move along, buddy’ so I took my foot off the brake and began inching forward. As I neared them (watching from the sidewalk), I carefully reached out and locked the door.
“Thunderscreech”, I thought to myself, “you’re being silly.” Then I looked over to my left as I passed the group and saw that the biggest one was standing up and facing directly at me.
I don’t know what I thought it could do, but… I punched it. I hit the gas and took off.
It’s a coincidence, right? I mean, a hamburglar of raccoons (I assume that’s the proper collective noun for these animals) standing in the middle of a darkened construction zone that just happens to be a natural constriction point I’d travel through is something that happens to other people, right?
A followup to this morning’s image. I was at the shop most of today and didn’t have a chance to check it out until later today. I finally discovered the actual cause of the premature traptulation. When wandering past the computer, he stumbled on the cable that handled the motion-detection.
The software compares video frames for changes and activates if there’s a difference. It turns out that if frame 1 has an image of the food bowl and frame 2 has a ‘picture’ of ‘CAMERA DISCONNECTED’, they do not match and the logic to fire the trap is run.
Some footage of the raccoon itself in motion. Damn his furry soul…
The raccoon may or may not know how to use computers. He entered the house, the trap was set off without him in it. I need to review the tapes and figure out how it went off without him in the cage. WHAT.
The group I’m in was just picked to participate in the Red Bull Creation challenge so I was out quite late last night. By the time I staggered into home, I was too tired to set the traps and cameras, so we barricaded the cat door for the night.
Tonight, I hope to try out the new trap. I’ll have video eyes on it and hope to have footage of the monster in its new cage-shaped home soon.
Watching the logs this morning from the first night’s attempt with the computer-enhanced trap, I thought cat shadows had set off the motion detector. The computer that was supposed to record ‘the big picture’ had helpfully shut down for Windows Updates an hour before the event, so I could only refer to a collection of snapshots from the detector itself.
On further review this afternoon, I discovered unmistakable evidence that what I thought happened had not happened and realized I would need to change my trap. A lot.
Clearly, I have underestimated my foe in the past, but no longer. I have tried to meet him on his battlefield: creature versus creature. This is foolish for he is clearly a better creature than I, a human, who because of civilization am separated somewhat from the mad scrabble of wilderness and the required base cunning it engenders.
This was a mistake. To win, I must use skills he presumably does not have but I possess: Skills of technology and science.
I have modified the animal trap so that it no longer matters how delicate his touch is when reaching over the pressure plate to grab the food. It no longer matters whether or not he can use some sort of raccoon magic to float through the air to secure the prize without triggering the door, because I am now using COMPUTERS.
I’ve attached a camera that looks down into the cage and am monitoring it with Yawcam, a program that can perform actions when motion is detected within a specific area.
When the raccoon enters the cage, the motion will cause it to execute a program that uses a electromechanical servo to trigger the pressure plate manually, trapping this furred bandit so I can take him elsewhere.
I also now have a camera set up to capture the grand event, recording with my Microsoft LifeCam. The end of his revolution, friends, WILL be televised. View the attached video to see the setup if any of this is unclear.
I set the trap last night, but when I woke up, it looks to have been triggered by one of my goddamn cats walking past the lamp and changing the light level JUST ENOUGH to set it off. I’ll play around with the lights to avoid a recurrence of this tonight, but I anticipate success in the near future, barring other interference from my GODDAMN CATS.
This raccoon has become my furry white whale, I know, but from hells heart I promise I _will_ catch it.
