Just as I realized I was probably driving too fast if an animal crossed the road, a raccoon leapt from the woods on the right. He wasn’t running with alternate legs, but leaping with his legs together. Kind of slow, though. I braked hard, and tried to remember if I’m supposed to turn the skid away from or towards him.
Then he was across the lane. I briefly cursed and then prayed for all 'coons trying to make a living tonight and continued home more slowly and watchful.
The other night I was taking my garbage down to the dumpster in the parking lot when I heard something moving near it. I’ve seen cats lurking about there, I’m not scared of possums, and I’m relatively certain that most raccoons aren’t going to bother me if I don’t bother them. In addition, the bag I was carrying held enough leftover scraps to make it a veritable Raccoon Feast.
I approached cautiously, not wanting to alarm whatever the animal was and possibly get myself eaten (or at least nibbled). I did make sure I made noise, so I wasn’t “sneaking up” on whatever was hanging out around the dumpster. For all I knew, it was some adolescent woodland animal kegger, and I wanted to make sure the lookouts could warn everyone and they could clear out, if they so chose.
But then, out of the dumpster itself, came an actual R.O.U.S. Yes, that’s right. A Raccoon of Unusual Size. This thing was larger than my neighbor’s dog. When it stretched itself out to reach for the ground, it was easily four feet long. I have never in my life seen a raccoon that big. It stared at me … and I saw hunger in his eyes. This raccoon was not a scavenger, he was a predator, and I know he was thinking that I had a good amount of meat on my bones and would probably feed his whole posse of unnaturally large (and possibly irradiated) raccoon brethren.
Naturally, I ran. I’m so not messing with a raccoon that might outweigh me–and I didn’t want my parents to have to identify my raccoon-mauled body.
I took the garbage out on my way to work this morning–no more nocturnal dumpster trips for me. Nuh-uh. I want to live.
<i><b>Raccoon at night</b></i>
Trashman’s delight!
Raccoon at morning,
Trashman take warning!
Sorry. Had to be done.
Unfortunately, it had to be done in vBcode rather than HTML…