Steven Helmer Publications

It's been a while since I've had the trail cameras outside because I just never got around to buying new batteries for them. However, my cat, Stormcloud, saw something a couple nights ago that got her agitated to the point she clawed her way through my daughter's bedroom window screen in the middle of the night to go after it. We fortunately found her unharmed a couple minutes later because she apparently changed her mind and didn't go past the windowsill and since I was curious about what she saw, I decided to get the batteries and re-deploy the trail cameras. I'm still not sure what got her so worked up, she's brave but not brave enough to tangle with a raccoon twice her size, but I did get some photos. Here they are: ___________________________________________________________________ Here are some of my previous trail camera photos: A Couple Trail Camera Squirrel Photos (2/14/2026) Trail Camera Photos (11/10/2024-11/12/2024) Trail Camera Photos (10/3/2024 - 1...

The weather was uncooperative over the weekend, so I kept my trail cameras indoors. I decided to risk it last night and put one out behind the house, only to discover it was raining again not long after. However, I still managed to keep my socks dry this morning when retrieving it and captured some late-night activity not far from our bedroom window. Here are some of the photos:

Our backyard was once again a popular spot for the local wildlife last night and early this morning. The trail camera ended up getting a lot of use, picking up videos of opossums, rabbits, raccoons and even a neighborhood cat. Here is a selection: 

The trail camera footage from last night confirmed a couple things for me. First, there are at least three opossums visiting our backyard at night, something I suspected but couldn't confirm until catching all three at once. Second, we do also still get raccoons in the backyard. It's been a while since I've seen evidence of that, but the camera captured a large one early this morning. I am starting to think I need invest in additional cameras though. This is both to increase visibility and because something keeps spooking the opossums but never ends up on camera. I'm curious what they are seeing. Anyway, here is a selection of videos from last night and this morning.

I pulled in the trail camera tonight because we're expecting bad weather, but we got a couple critters caught on it during the night. Here are the photos:

When we set up a trail camera outside our bedroom window and pointing toward our backyard, it was because we knew there was an opossum that would occasionally visit and help itself to the birdseed that fell to the ground under the feeder. We got plenty of photos of that: Along with a stray cat that likes to help itself to something in that seed too, as well as various other critters you would expect to see in town, like rabbits and squirrels. I viewed the footage from last night, however, and was not expecting to see this: I actually caught a photo of one of the raccoons a couple days ago, but it was just a tail and I thought it belonged to the stray cat. It's not the type of animal I would expect to see inside the city limits and had never noticed anything to indicate we had them nearby. I'm not even sure where they live during the day (though the same can be said about the opossum).  Anyway, I'm starting to understand why the cats are so obsessed with watching out the win...