Visitations

Soon after moving to our house in Newalla, we began having some wildlife visitations. We never saw any animals, but most mornings we could tell that something had been rummaging around, mostly getting into the cat’s food and water. Things would be scattered around and broken, and I even wondered if something was trying to cook a bird on the grill at times. Pam stopped leaving cat food overnight on the back porch. The cats complained, but Pam explained the situation to them and they seemed to have accepted that.

Petey da Wiener Dog cornered a possum once, and lame as he is, he latched on to it and howled and barked and carried on to such a point that Pam went into a panic about Petey’s safety. She hurried to where Petey and the possum were, yelling hysterically for me to help Petey, but when I arrived I saw that it looked as if the possum needed help instead of Petey. The poor little possum was doing what possums do when attacked, that is, playing possum, but Petey was continually lunging to bite the thing. Pam finally scooped Petey up and babied the little dog, while Petey kept growling and baring his teeth and made every effort to get out of Pam’s grasp so he could finish the job.

A couple minutes after Pam “rescued” Petey, the possum got on his feet and lumbered off as if nothing had happened.

A few weeks after that, Petey woke us up at two in the morning. I climbed down the stairs and saw Petey barking at the back door and making as if he wanted to go out and make war. I thought it was just the possum again, and almost opened the door for Petey just to see what would happen. I peeked out the door, and saw a shadow in the dark moving near the rocking chairs. Hoping to surprise whatever was there, I flipped on the light, and saw a black and white kittie-cat-looking thing, and thought better about letting Petey go outside. Petey and I let the skunk do whatever it wanted to do on the back porch, and eventually it wandered to the side of the house and into the front yard, with Petey following his every move from inside the house until it disappeared to the south.

Petey wasn’t so lucky about a month later. I was working in Danger Lane Workshop one evening, and Pam came out to see me, carrying Petey (Pam does that sometimes – she can’t resist me). While we were in the workshop, Petey got a bit agitated, like he wanted to go outside, so Pam absent-mindedly opened the door and let him out and she and I continued our conversation.

The next minute we heard Petey barking and howling, and the next moment we smelled the same smell you would smell when you drive over a polecat road kill (skunk for you suburbanites). Pam looked at me, and I looked at Pam, and we both knew in an instant what had just occurred. We rushed to the door.

Now, the workshop used to be a barn. And a barn being a barn naturally attracts various types of animals. I knew full well that animals were used to going in and around the barn and would continue doing so even after the barn became a workshop. And I did see a skunk wandering around the barn a couple of times after we moved in, but I didn’t really think too much about it.

But, now, the reality of skunk habitation sunk in, along with that distinctive overpowering smell. When Pam and I got outside, Pam immediately called for Petey, but Petey was in no shape to respond. He was writhing on the ground, rubbing his poor little eyes with his paws, then writhing and rolling on the ground again. Pam rushed to him and got about five feet from him – that’s when the full force of the smell hit her nostrils, and she stopped like she had been hit with a brick (not that I would know, I’ve never hit her with a brick before). At this time, the skunk came from around the other side of the workshop and scampered away into the darkness while we were left to tend to Petey.

Petey submitted to a tomato juice bath, a peroxide dousing, and an industrial strength detergent scrub, but the peculiar smell stayed on him for weeks.

We know now that Petey cannot go out by himself after dark. And Bailey da Hound Dog gets put in his kennel when it gets dark.

And we always turn the porch light on before we go out after dark ourselves. I’m not so worried about things that bite as I am cautious about things that could make me an unpleasant subject of conversation at work the next day.

A few nights ago, while ruminating on the events of the day, we heard a racket on the back porch. Petey the Wiener Dog rushed to the back door and began growling and barking. Sachmo, the Brain-damaged Cat, joined him and also began growling in that weird way cats do sometimes.

Well, I just had to see what the boys were concerned about, so I turned on the light to the back porch and looked out the door window.

There, rummaging around, were no less than four raccoons. I half expected to see them make themselves at home in the rockers, stoke up the grill and bar-b-q some chicken.

I ran to get the camera and captured this Pulitzer Prize quality snapshot.


Cute little things, aren’t they – the chicken-stealing, cat-molesting, garbage-can-tipping vermin. They didn’t run off when I was taking pictures, quite the opposite. As I snapped away, they were approaching me enmass and trying to out-flank me. I didn’t know what they would have done if they had caught me, but I got the distinct impression they wanted my camera. This was confirmed a few days later when I found a note on the porch, in recognizable raccoon script, offering a substantial payment in exchange for some digital copies of the pictures I took.

So, that night, I burned a CD with the pictures on it and set it on the porch along with a note of agreement about the price. The next morning it was gone.

That was a week ago, and I’m still waiting for the “substantial payment”.
Raccoons may be cute, but they have no integrity.