#animals digging

Caught one! This video appears to show a raccoon curiously inspecting the Arlo security camera I set up to see who the marauders might be... The image is fuzzy, but if you pause it and then move the cursor to the very beginning, it appears to show the animal’s back (lower left corner of frame) with a barely perceptible ringed tail off to the right of it. Then a second later you see the ear and whiskers loom up as it gets close to the camera. (I don’t know where the green color comes from, Tumblr added it...) So what with the ringed tail, I’m pretty sure it’s a raccoon. Now... what to do about it? 

Something is digging holes in the Hügels, and in the mulch generally. This has been going on for some months but it seems especially intense this winter and early spring. It takes place at night, so it isn’t ground squirrels (we do have a family of them living under the shed, but they are diurnal and apparently don’t dig except to create their living space). And these holes are not domiciles; they are shallow holes, from a few inches to 6 or 8 inches deep and between 2 and 4 inches wide. There is no evidence that these creatures are eating plant roots, but roots do get exposed by their digging, and the soil is disturbed, which can’t be good for the delicate soil food web! I have not seen any animals in the yard besides the ground squirrels, but the evidence suggests skunks or raccoons, which dig to find tasty bugs and grubs to eat.