6/26/14
So now it's Thursday evening, I come home from a 10 hour day at work... we had our public open house. So happy my buddy Lois came so I could give her the tour myself! It had been an exhausting day, as I was challenged to a foot race on our astro turf in the work out room. Good news it was a tie... not sure what to think news... I was racing with a septuagenarian! LOL Anyway I ran through Happy Joe's for pizza and get home to sit down and enjoy the evening with some friends on my front porch. The pile of cat food I swept up is still there so I go on a mission to find the dust pan... I find it at the same time as my company shows up... I am officially distracted. We sit down and the sun is setting and I happen to look up and see a HUGE ASS RACOON climbing the tree alongside the house next door! My friend, Samantha, whom is by far the biggest animal lover I have ever met, starts to coo and talk to it. He promptly comes down and starts sniffing around and goes under the porch. After a minute or two I look up and DIRECTLY in front of me with his head poking through the railing, almost touching my feet, is the HUGE ASS RACOON! I let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead and scare the racoon away. Now Samantha is scolding me for scaring the poor thing... I'm thinking REALLY?!? What about this poor OLD thing that almost had a coronary? It finally dawns on us it is after the food still in a pile on the porch. So, Samantha's son, Anthony, grabs the broom and dustpan and throws what is left out in the side yard. Of course anyone that knows anything about wildlife knows they are just going to smell that food in the grass and come looking for it. And sure enough the HARcoon (HugeAssRacoon) showed his furry little masked face again. Now Samantha is standing up and cooing and talking to the friggin' thing like it's a PET! I am telling her to STOP because I don't want it to get too comfortable... you see just last week a squirrel came up on the porch railing, paused to look at us sitting there and then jumped down onto the footstool sitting right in front of the occupied chairs and ran across to the side porch and hung out on the railing not 5 feet away... It has a distinctive tail, and I have seen this creature on my porch more than once since then!
Now it is getting late, and I have to pack Wayne's lunch for him for work. I am gone maybe 5-7 minutes... when I come back out Samantha and Anthony tell me the HARcoon came up onto the porch and was sniffing the spot where the cat food had sat all day. Anthony was sitting on a folding chair right over the top of that spot! When he realized the HARcoon was right at his feet he jumped a little bit and sucked in his breath, clearly startled by the brevity this animal had, which was just enough to startle the HARcoon to run away. Harry, the HARcoon, is back in the side yard looking for any other bits of cat food he may have missed earlier. Wayne has gone to work, the tikis are burning, and we are starting to relax when Harry pops his head up AGAIN through the porch railing, this time further away from me... he obviously took pity on me and wanted to save me a heart attack. So once again Samantha goes into cooing mode again. She wants to go get more cat food to put out for him. I am emphatically telling her "NO!!" She is worried he will starve, look at him.... he clearly is not a skinny little waif! Still baby talking Harry he makes his way all the way over to the porch steps. As I watch in terror, he cautiously comes up one step at a time, all the while hearing encouragement from Auntie Samantha. At this point, I am unable to speak, or move and Harry decides it is not safe and backs away, down the stairs and back under the porch. Once the terror subsides I decide it is time to call it a day. I say good night to my company and make sure there is no food or food scented things left out on the porch where I go in and start planning on what to pack for my weekend away.
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