What lies beneath

There's something lurking under my back deck. Tristan has been investigating an unknown it recently. I have a large deck out my back door that part way out has one step down to ground level. Tristan can go under the deck by the house but not under the rest of the deck which extends in the yard. He circles around and under the deck, stops, peers under the deck and then repeats over and over.

It's all rather mysterious. Tristan doesn't bark at it like he would if it were a raccoon and he does it only after dusk. Very eerie. I prefer to think it's possibly a nest of squirrels versus other potential rodents.

Tristan has tangled with raccoons so he's no fan of them at all. When he was only several months old, a raccoon charged out of the corner of the backyard at him. Luckily I was there and did my best impression of a mama bear. I roared up and flailed my arms which scared the raccoon off. I told Tristan then, "Just wait. Someday you will be very big and then they'll be sorry."

It wasn't long before the tables were turned. I heard this strange sound going on and went to investigate. Tristan had a raccoon in his mouth and was shaking it like a dust mop. Long story but short ending is that I got them separated but the raccoon departed both this world and my yard. Raccoons can carry a very nasty bacterium, leptospirosis, which is life threatening to dogs so Tristan had to have tests to see if he'd been exposed to it. He was fine but it was an expensive and sad episode.

Here's a masked marauder hanging out on my neighbor's shed while casing my backyard (before they discovered the rules had changed). That's Tristan kennel which he has never used.

I'm not too worried about the creature from the black lagoon hanging out under my deck since it is apparently friendly and I have my protector.