It is not often I get so angry that it consumes me to the point of being unhealthy, but recently it has been that way.

A few weeks ago a single raccoon reached through the chicken wire of the coop outside our bedroom window and pulled one chick to it’s death and began eating another alive through the wire. After it removed one leg of the chicken, it was surprised to find two angry humans chasing it. I hit it with my walking stick, but it was quickly away.

It made me sick with anger. We set the live trap and I planned on the many ways I would make it suffer. It never showed up again. But it has put me in such a state of fear and anger that I rarely am able to sleep the night and often lay awake at night listening for any odd sound or screaming chicks.

To combat this problem we are beefing up the chicken containment systems to fort knox boxes. hardware cloth, complicated locks and metal roofs, oh and electric fencing around them and the garden. I will take no chance and the first one I see will soon lose it’s life.
Death to the raccoon.

I’ve been considering this post for some time, trying to ignore it, but never really succeeding. So here goes…

I commute to work in downtown Seattle four days a week from our home on Whidbey Island. It’s about 35 miles as the crow flies and can take just over an hour to drive early in the morning if you time the ferry right. However I do not drive in rush hour traffic very well and really do not want to experience that any more, so I use public transportation instead.

Island Transit buses are free island wide because it’s such a small place that collecting fares would just be to expensive. So voters decided to foot the bill themselves and offer free public transportation on the island. It’s closely coordinated to the ferry departures and arrivals, but also very casually operated while in transit. You can flag down a bus at any point on it’s route, and get off pretty much anywhere you want. Very nice little system.

After driving the first 4 miles to the Clinton Park and Ride at 5:00 AM, I board the free Island Transit bus to the ferry a mile away. The bus arrives just as the ferry is arriving so walk on passengers, including me, can get on the ferry immediately after it unloads it’s vehicles. Twenty-five minutes later I am in Mukilteo walking off the ferry to another waiting bus, this time the Community Transit #417 bus to Seattle. It’s a nice comfortable bus with reclining seats and arm rests and has few stops to make before hitting the I-5 HOV lane headed straight to Seattle.

The bus drops me off two blocks from work at 6:20 or so, just an hour and a half from my leaving the house. I am stress free and rested from a nice nap on the bus. I’m looking forward to making the first pot of coffee at work and my poor man’s mocha.

After a ten hour day at work, I head for home, but this time via a different mode of public transportation. I could just take the #417 back the way it came, but it will often get caught in traffic and miss my ferry. So I take the Sounder from King Street Station in Seattle to Mukilteo. It’s a heavy rail commuter train with about four beautiful and comfortable double-decker cars. To leave this leg of the journey at that would be a sin because this is no ordinary rail commute.

The Sounder leaves Seattle promptly at 5:05 PM and begins it’s 28 mile journey north to Mukilteo by entering the south portal of the underground rail tunnel under Seattle. That in itself is pretty cool, however it only gets better. In transit this train will pass by the Seattle waterfront, SAM Sculpture Garden, Myrtle Edwards waterfront park, Hiram Chittenden Locks and Botanic Gardens, Shilshole Marina, Golden Gardens Beach Park, Carkeek Park, Richmond Beach Park, Woodway unofficial nude beach, Edmonds Beach Park, Edmonds Underwater Park, Meadodale beach park, two old wooden shipwrecks, Picnic Point Beach Park, Mukilteo State Park and Mukilteo Lighthouse Park. From the time the train passes the Chittenden Locks it travels next to the incredible blue green waters of the Salish Sea, appearing at times to gently fly over the water just ten feet below. In the afternoon it is a magnificent view of the Sound, the islands, the Olympics and the beaches and their wildlife. And they only want me to pay $4 for this ride?

I arrive at Mukilteo Ferry Terminal forty-five minutes later and totally refreshed and relaxed. A brisk walk to the ferry and by 6:00 PM I am sailing across Possession Sound towards our island home. What a journey!