'do it like they do on the discovery channel.' aka backyard food chains.

Ok so here's the thing. I'm a vegetarian who likes to eat meat.  If I DO eat meat it can NOT in any way resemble an actual animal. If it has eyes on it and can look back at me-forget it!  If it has legs on it or IS a leg-nope. Anything that looks like it can run off my plate is welcome to leave.  Steaks make me ill. I always have visions of cows walking around with 'steak shaped sections' cut out of them! Yuk.  Even a large hamburger can make my stomach roll.

Now I will eat it if it in no way resembles an animal. Chicken nuggets-fine. Batter fried fish-no problem. Shrimp-if they are de-veined((cause that's just disgusting!)) can be counted as acceptable provided they are battered so I can't see their flesh! Double yuk.
As such, when people ask if I am a vegetarian I answer that ''I'm half-vegetarian.''.  Surprisingly most people don't question this contradiction. Fine by me!

Anyway my 'non-animal-shaped' food diet has allowed me to forget where meat comes from. Again-fine by me! I hate thinking about the whole process.
For example I live 10 or so miles from a 'cow factory' as we call it.  The phrase implies that it's a place where cows are put together, when in fact the opposite is true. The cows are 'processed'. ((yuk))
Now occasionally I'll be driving behind a trailer full of cows and the whole time I'm hoping and praying that the driver won't turn into the 'cow factory'.  There's always one sweet little pink nose sticking out of the back of the trailer as if to say 'See how cute I am! Don't let them chop me up!'  Occasionally, when the driver does turn into the meat factory, two things happen.
A) I suddenly hate the driver
and
B) I start to cry.
Now don't be fooled! I'm the first to admit my hypocrisy here. You see often times I'm driving on this road back from Sparta, having finished an hour long work out/weights class that has me fatigued and starving.  So I'll be driving back from this place, see said cows, cry & then go home to eat Tacos (Tuesdays are, of course, Taco Tuesday at my house).  Oh the humanity!
Now nothing in my taco resembles the cow, so it's easy to forget. But still... sometimes I wanna just smack myself. I WOULD smack myself actually but it'd probably hurt so I usually talk myself out of it before it's too late.

Ok so where am I going with this ridiculous ramble that so far has only further exposed my craziness to the world?
Raccoons.
Do you ever watch the discovery channel? You know those shows where they show the big whales looking all gorgeous and magnificent. Then they show the whale eating a sea lion and you are left sitting there thinking 'bastard whale!' and then the cute little sea lions, with their long whiskered faces and big brown eyes go and kill a penguin! OMG! 'Bastard sea lions!!!'. Usually by the time they go to show what the penguins eat I have to shut the program off and try to pretend that penguins will just eat seaweed sandwiches and cups of tea. I heard an horrible rumour once that penguins eat fish, but I'm just gonna hope that IF this is true, those sweet looking penguins ONLY eat ugly fish who are evil! Obviously all nice, sweet and cute fish are left alone. Right? Right.

How does this relate to life in Wisconsin? I'm getting there.
You see earlier this year we had 8 sweet ducks! Then we had 7. 6. 5. 4. 3! 3 Ducks! OMG. You see something was eating them, or I should say part of them. Often when Scott got up for work in the morning he'd find part of a duck outside. Process of elimination tells us that raccoons were the culprit! A fox, for example, will eat the whole stinkin duck! And while I am not happy about this, I have to give the fox some credit for not wasting at least! But coons aren't so considerate.
Scott had wanted to get a gun since, well, since he was probably 4 years old actually. Ok what I mean is when we moved here Scott tried to convince me that we needed a gun. For protection. I told him a dog would do the same thing but apparently dogs can hurt people, so guns would be safer.(MAJOR SARCASM.)) Also he had other reasons for not wanting a dog. I'm assuming the main one is that, no matter how hard you squeeze a dog, it'll never shoot bullets out of either end.  Even if he COULD get a dog to shoot a bullet out, I imagine it'd be difficult to aim.
Anyway by the time duck 4 had gone missing I knew something had to be done.  So Scott stayed up one night and sure enough here came mama & baby coons to choose from the 'Piggott-All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet' known as the yard.  Scott managed to shoot the mama and we haven't seen her since.  I have, however seen the babies.  One night, after being horribly stung by vicious wasps, I was awake in the night being sick.  While hanging out in the loo, between bouts of calm and, well, puking I could hear chatter outside.  It kind of sounded like an old lady snickering! So I looked outside, hoping my neighbour hadn't lost her mind and decided to hang out by my bathroom in the middle of the night laughing to herself-only to find coons looking back at me!
THEY WERE SOOO CUTE! I'm telling you! But the bitter memory of my slain ducks still lingered so I went and woke Scott up.  He got a flash light, confirmed the coons were there and then went to get his gun...but came back with a camera instead! That's how adorable these little babies were!  Needless to say, no coons were injured that night.
Now the other day Scott woke me up during one of my rare naps (this is sarcasm-I nap as a hobby) to tell me to come outside.  Upon going outside I was informed that there was a coon in the burn barrel! OMG. So I went to look at this evil duck killing animal.  What I saw was the sweetest brown eyes looking back at me. This little raccoon was shaking in fear.  He was no bigger than a football and was petrified! Scott and I talked about whether or not he should shoot it but we're both really big softy's at heart.  Recently we'd fenced off the fresh water spring so that the ducks were kept close to the alpaca at night and it was working-he protects the little animals from predators. With this in mind we decided to spare this little fella, only after making him promise to ONLY eat vegetables from now on. 
He agreed, so we let him go. 
Here he is:

So Scott kindly dragged the burn barrel over across the road into the tall grass to let him go.

Tipped the barrel over ever so gently... Using the 'kick it over as hard as you can' technique. (just kidding!)







And then, perhaps thinking this may be one big scheme concocted by the baby coons who are seeking revenge for their mothers untimely death...
Scott suddenly disappeared!

So I'm happy to say no Raccoons were harmed in the process, and all ducks are still alive and well so apparently the Raccoon has stuck to our deal.  Whew. For a second there we thought we were gonna have to make a hat out of him! =D

Looking back I have decided that the moral of this story is to not watch the discovery channel... bastard sea lions!