The message
from Gary Woods contains these words:

Janet Baraclough wrote:

For you to
have actually had some, in the UK, is roughly the equivalent of an
urgler reporting irrefutable evidence of fairies at the bottom of their
garden. Instant fame! :-)

And as you doubtless know, for us lurking Murkens, "Coons" are certainly
NOT a mythical creature, though I wish they were. Also, a major reservoir
of rabies in the wild.

We don't have rabies in the UK either.

We don't have hedgehogs though, more's the pity.

Maybe we could send you some..like we gave rabbits to Australia :-)

I've refrained at guessing what fauna might be living in that hole. Here
it would almost certainly be a woodchuck, known elsewhere as marmot, but I
didn't see a mention, so probably not resident there unless escaped.

Nah, we don't have those either. My guess is, too small to be a
badger, too smelly to be rabbits; could be a feral ferret or young fox
setting up home in an enlarged rabbit hole.

Cold wind whistling about, so I'm going into "plan for spring" mode to
preserve what is left of my sanity.

There has been (brief) snow on the mountain tops and the wind has
blown most of the leaves down off the trees; but our garden hasn't had a
frost yet and is fairly sheltered from the prevailing wind. The
following are in flower; hebes, prostanthera, argyranthemum, verbenas,
escallonias, ceanothus, acidanthera, yellow crocosmia, schizostylis,
rose Alastair Stella Gray, orange-peel clematis, mahonia, fuchsias,
viburnum bodnantense, herbaceous salvias, hellebores and bellis daisies.

Janet. (Isle of Arran)