Coon or Skunk

I have been having a major problem with some kind of rodent in my back yard. I say back yard because he/she/it has not noticed all the plants located on the front porch yet...THANK GOD!!!

This....thing comes up on our deck, knocks over my compost bucket (now relocated in the garage), digs the dirt out of my flower pots and leaves behind it's not so small droppings (on four different occasions to be exact). It has also attacked the grease can attached to the gas grill. Yup, every night it digs up my pots and every morning I sweep it up and put it back in the pots...like clock work.

It also digs in my veggie garden. It dug most of the tomato plants I put in the very night they were planted. I had to replant most of them. I think there were two untouched. How very kind of IT! I had them all covered with milk jugs. After this very frustrating incident, I covered them with a large piece of plastic as well as the milk jugs, secured with bricks and concrete blocks. I apparently left a gap unprotected because the blasted thing got under the plastic and did another job on my tomatoes. Which I planted yet again. They are now the sorriest looking tomatoes you have ever seen. They have been undisturbed since as I have been sure to cover and secure them each and every night and beginning to look half way decent. It is now planting time and I have now have to cover everything I plant...until this critter meets an untimely demise. AND it can't be soon enough for me. Oh Yes, I will take that blasted thing out as soon as I can stay up long enough to find it's miserable, sorry butt creeping into my yard.

Now, it's getting late and time for the routine cover up.