While pruning today, I remembered this racoon story! Thank you Ray.
Terror at night!
A few years ago I heard some suspicious noises in my moved out daughters bedroom. DAMN, those cats have got into the food bag again! I get out of bed -- and to set the stage, must make note that without my glasses I'm kinda blind. I'm only wearing my underpants as well.
I slam open the door expecting to find my two cats wolfing down the large sack I always keep in her room. Instead I find a huge furry critter making all sorts of angry, squealing noses. I start chasing it around, and realize my own exposed and vulnerable situation.
This was not my cat! I close the door, get dressed, put on my glasses. I open all the other doors in the house and return to the bedroom ...
Upon opening the door I suddenly realize that this is one VERY BIG and VERY ANGRY Mama Raccoon staking firm claim over the cat food bag. Closing the door, I retreat once again.
I return, now well armed with a broom. MAMA RACCOON stands up on her hind legs and takes me on. SWAT, SWAT, swat ... I retreat once again.
Realizing that I have encountered more than bare feet should ever be asked to face, I put on my boots and get a flat bladed shovel. I enter and wack the raccoon once again. This time I beat her out of the bedroom, down the hall and out through the backporch.
WHEW!
I return to bed, lay down, and all of a sudden hear a familiar munch, munch, munch. I open the door and find five or six raccoon children taking their pleasure with the food. I open the other doors of the house (NOT! the back porch door.) and return with the broom. SWAT, SWAT, SWAT! -- raccoons are flying all over my house, over the kitchen table, over the couch, under the table -- until I finally got all of them out!
I return to the back porch to see them all chattering at me, as if to ask, why I had been so RUDE. That MAMA was a good hefty sized creature, and with her fur flying out she looked like some Stephen King nightmare. All she had been doing was protecting her young!
Herbert Senft (c)2009
