Strange things are afoot

Several weeks ago Toby and I made a very strange discovery in our yard. Some one or something had been shredding our trees.  One fairly large Quaking Aspen in our yard was particularly hard hit. 

Exhibit A: Razor sharp marks in the trunk of the tree approximately 3 feet off the ground.

We were baffled by the discovery and sought several opinions and came up with several theories of our own, including, but not limited to...

A cougar
A man with a razor knife
A young buck rubbing the felt off his antlers
A very large cat (not a cougar)
And last but not least -- a Chupacabra

Now before you go thinking the Chupacabra is the least likely suspect, consider these facts...

There had been reports of a dog and several chicken myseteriously killed in the middle of the day and what other creater would stand less than 2 feet tall and be able to put razor sharp claw marks into a tree...I mean seriously.  I'm surprised the chupacabra wasn't our first guess! Once we'd determined it COULD be a mythical creature we shared our curiousity with others.

The occurances continued and at last Toby's dad installed his trail camera to the side of the garage to see if he could catch the culprit once and for all.

Several days later he shared the following photos with us

Culprit #1 - A racoon that I like to call Swiper. Caught red handed shredding our weeping cherry tree!

Culprit #2 - a young buck I like to call George, not actually caught in the act of distruction, but he might be thinking about it.  you can never tell with deer named George.  (p.s. George also likes to sleep outside my window some nights.)

Culprit #3 - "A dude with a golf green hairdo"
No, Wait! It's just Toby's brother checking out the trail cam.
Before we convinced Toby's dad of the fact it was, in fact, just Jared he was convinced we need to get a whole lot more trail cams to catch the mysterious creeper in the yard!

We had a good laugh, and the tree is healing, slowly...i think. But I have to admit I'm a little sad that there are no Chupacabras in the neighborhood.