Ever feel like you're being watched?

Last night there were three of them staring down at me through the skylight in our family room. 

For at least the last six years there's been a family of raccoons living in the roof of the house next door. I remember the first time I noticed them I was sitting in the sunroom with Matthew teaching him to read and looked up through the skylight to see that we were being watched.

Each spring Big Mama has a new litter of at least half a dozen cubs (or pups, or whatever baby racoons are called). We love to watch the babies; they frolic in the eaves, they mischievously pull pieces of the shingles from the roof and toss them into our back yard, they scamper up and down the roof, and they roll around wrestling on the little flat spot above the chimney.

Don't get me wrong. While they're incredibly cute, I'm glad that they're not in our roof. I can't imagine how noisy it is to have a family of eight or ten racoons living above you. And I can't imagine why in the heck the neighbours haven't evicted them yet. Besides the fact that they're crazy. The neighbours, not the racoons.

Anyway, every evening at dusk the racoons emerge and for a short time it's like we are the animals in the zoo.