Rocky Raccoon

Lots of animal news from around here. We saw dolphins and hawks on our walk, as well as lots of little squirrels and a huge jack rabbit that I thought was a little dog sitting under a tree. Up at the UC Santa Cruz campus we had a deer with antlers walk behind us on the path up to the pool and saw two coyotes run in front of the car on the way down after practice. At night we've heard the coyotes do a weird laugh like call and last night we had 3 big barn owls hooting in the trees off our porch. When I went outside to bbq our dinner, two were on the wires near the pool looking in at me and calling again. Last night, the hot water heater was making a weird noise before bed so I had Dad come over an inspect it and down the back stairs and all around the pool were the biggest raccoon prints I had ever seen! They were still really wet, too, so we must have scared them as we came out to inspect! I have a bunch of pictures to put up from around our house and one of Nae coaching swim practice on Tuesday night, but they are being a pain to get off my phone. I will try and have them posted tomorrow. For now, here is a picture of a Pacific Tree Frog (Nae says) that hopped out of one of our plants the other day as Mom was watering the backyard. Sorry for the bluriness, he was really small and really hard to get up close to!

Oh yeah, and apparently we have a family of bobcats living a few houses down so I will try and get pictures of them if I see them.