Monthly Archives: September 2013

Night of the Raccoon

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The morning of the Keep the Beautiful in Bonita clean up this year, I thought it would be nice to take a swim in the pool when we got home. Since my Floridian blood freezes solid in water anywhere below 87 degrees, I turned on the solar heater so that by the time we got home that night the pool would be just the right temperature for a “quick dip.” My wife Lori of course knew better. “You know you’ll never make it past the couch, right?”

And of course… she was right. As soon as I walked in the door I plopped on the couch and in minutes was sleeping soundly… until I was awakened by the sound of the doggy door banging open on the pool deck. I sat up quickly… looked over at Lori and growled, smiling…”Raccoons!” You see, the Nelson family and raccoons have been feuding for decades and from the stories my father used to tell me about he and his brothers hunting the wily masked creatures… it’s fair to say that we had started it. So, in what could easily be considered raccoon karma, these hoodlums now tip over our garbage cans, slice through screens, eat the cat’s food and make funny faces and apparently insulting gestures at our dogs through the windows at night. This makes our dogs go crazy, and we of course then yell at the dogs, which delights the raccoons to no end, causing them to run away laughing their little raccoon tails off!

Recently, they discovered the doggy door into the pool area and how funny it was to make me run after them in my underwear. I do this because I can’t let the dogs out with potentially rabid raccoons on the pool deck and because I’m not thinking clearly at midnight. So that night, I again exploded out of the door looking like a giant maniac baby, wielding the pool net high over my head as I ran after the masked bandit. As usual he ran into the bushes behind the spa, and as usual I jumped up on the edge of the spa and began poking the net into the bushes. As the dogs barked frantically from inside the house, I could hear Lori yelling through the closed door and the chaos, “Just leave the screen door open and he’ll leave.” But this, my friend… was war. Suddenly, the angry mammal shot up the palm tree and fastened itself onto the screen just above my head. Without thinking (which should actually be the name of this story) I scooped the “much larger than I thought” raccoon off of the screen with the net like he was a giant pancake. As I watched him falling in slow motion directly in front of me into the spa, it dawned on me that the only way for the crazed mammal to get out of the spa was to climb over the top of me. I had no desire to have an angry raccoon attack me while I was in my underwear, so I decided on a different strategy. I turned and ran like an eight year-old girl. But just as I took my first step it became clear that I had, like a cartoon character, run out of solid ground and was for a split second running in mid air over the pool. Strangely enough, as I plunged into the dark black water of the pool my first thought was…”Hey, this water temperature is perfect!” followed quickly by… “ARRRGGH… AN ANGRY RACCOON IS GOING TO CLIMB ONTO MY HEAD!”

I scrambled out of the water and grabbed my pool net again, and with my back to the French doors scanned the pool deck. “COME ON PAL! IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT!” I bellowed mightily, standing there soaking wet in my now drooping “not so tighty whiteys.” As I stood there doing a really bad Navy Seal imitation, I heard a quiet “tap, tap, tap” on the window behind me. I turned to see my wife Lori silently mouthing the words “He’s right behind you!” Sure enough, there behind me was a wet, snarling raccoon with his back up against the wall. Our eyes locked for an instant and then we both came to the same conclusion… “RUN!” Luckily the masked intruder headed for the door leading outside where he belonged and I headed for the door leading to the couch where I belonged.

The raccoon has never returned to our pool deck, but as I nurse my pulled back muscles and suffer the disappointed looks on my dogs faces … I’m not so certain who won this battle. But I suppose that is the nature of a feud… no one ever really wins.

Rabid Prejudice

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I don’t like bats. Yeah, yeah… I know. They are amazing animals (flying vermin) that eat… I don’t know… millions of tons of insects per day (suck your blood and give you horrible diseases) and are indispensable to the health and well being of our ecosystem (and vampire movies).

I wasn’t born with this obvious prejudice against radar guided flying mammals. I remember a more innocent time when I was free of my preconceived notions about “winged rats”. I would sit in front of our family’s small black and white TV and watch The Andy Griffith Show as Barney Fife would get all bug eyed, freaking out about bats. He was certain that “Bats will lay eggs in your hair and make you go crazy!!” Yes… we all laughed and laughed. Ridiculous! Or… was it?

One evening, years later, I had just gotten the kids to sleep. As I laid there in bed, reading by the light of a small lamp, I kept hearing something… something fluttering. I sat my book down and looked suspiciously over my glass’s around the room. Nothing. Then, I saw what looked like a large moth fluttering along the ceiling. I tried to ignore it, but finally as it flapped its way overhead, I stood up in bed and swatted the winged irritant off of the ceiling and onto the floor. After I jumped down off the bed and turned the main light on, I bent down closely over the moth so I could get a better look at it. “Hmmph!” I said out loud to no one. “What kind of bug do we have here?” I reached down to turn it over, but just before I touched it…

You never really know how you will react to unusual circumstances. But apparently, when a “moth” spins its fuzzy head towards me, opens its mouth and growls with a full set of nightmarish teeth, I jump back up on the bed and scream like a little girl. Ok… It really wasn’t a growl, it was more of a sharp “ping”.

Fortunately… no… ironically, I keep a bat next to my bed (a baseball bat) so I snatched it up and stood like a samurai ready to do battle… with an animal the size of a large butterfly, in my underwear, armed with a Louisville slugger. It didn’t take long before a couple of things became clear to me. First, the miniature mammal wasn’t going to attack me and second, Barney Fife had been right! The Bat had obviously made me go crazy, even without laying eggs in my hair.

In the end, I simply scooped the hapless creature up with the same magazine that I’d smacked him with and then set him gently outside. After all… setting him free was good karma, right? WRONG! Not even a year later my mother called one evening from Idaho. She had been sitting in her easy chair, minding her own business, in front of the fire, watching Gunsmoke, when a rabid bat snuck up on her and bit her on the big toe! And you know those infamous shots you’ve always heard about? They’re REAL! She had to get them! Karma Shmarma, I don’t care if I do smack a random member of your family with a magazine, you don’t get to BITE MY MOM AND GIVE HER RABIES!

That was ten years ago. Ever since then I have watched the evening sky (and bedroom ceiling) with narrowed suspicious eyes. Even though the time has passed without any further bat related incidents, it has not tempered my mistrust… my dislike for the entire bat family. I continue to scowl at them as they flap and swoop around at night on their little rubbery wings. And even though I know that I am irrationally judging the character of an entire species of millions, upon millions of law abiding, hard working bats and that I’m doing so based upon the actions of two misguided hoodlums and the hysterical rantings of an infamously cowardly T.V. character… I find it hard to accept them as fellow productive creatures with nice little bat families and bat fears of their own. But since I do know that prejudice is based on fear, anger, mistrust and misunderstanding… and because my daughters favorite thing in the whole world is (ugh)Batman, I have promised her that I would conquer my “possibly” irrational prejudice with an open heart, an open mind…and at night… tightly closed windows and doors.