Having met the Bucket Challenge, our resident raccoons sets out to conquer the Teeter Totter Challenge.  This is the second blog in the “Raccoon Challenge” series.

Momma Raccoon and her four offspring have been coming to the woodland feeding area every night since early August.  As we would expect, the youngsters appear to delight in exploring all food possibilities.  A friend and I set out to design an obstacle to stimulate the youngster’s intellectual growth.  (My friend was all-about the design challenge.  Need I even say that the desire to provide intellectual growth to young raccoons rests solely on me?  Probably not.)

The Teeter Totter Goes Into Production

We settled on building a teeter totter.  The obstacle was placed in the woods with a small bucket of food hanging above it.  Research shows that raccoons love marshmallows, so the small bucket was filled with marshmallows and whole peanuts.  At first, the raccoons shied away from the challenge entirely.  When one youngster finally braved the climb — and the teeter tottered — everyone scattered.  The object stayed in the “to be feared” category for a week or so.

As the youngsters grew, however, they began to meet the challenge almost every night.  There was no “group think” — no teamwork where a couple of raccoons would hold down one end of the board while another climbed.  I know you’re shocked.  That said, there was learning.  With regularity, the board would be flipped to give the raccoons added height — facilitating reaching the bucket.  The bucket would be set in swinging motion — allowing the raccoon to stand even-higher on the board to get a better grasp on the bucket.  Finally, at least one raccoon has learned that it is imperative to arrive as soon after dark as possible to collect on the promise of a marshmallow treat.

With that introduction — please enjoy the product of raccoon intellectual development.