'Coons

[James Brody]

There are lots of noises on my small property: I refuse to trim my lawn except along my borders so that deer, foxes, and scores of birds share my ground and the several hundred trees that I planted a quarter-century ago. This year, however, I've mowed more and there's less cover for the critters but things are just as noisy.

I woke up this morning to a new sound: a sustained "trilling" that was too persistent to be a bird. I eventually rolled out of bed, stepped into the sun room, and looked directly into the eyes of a mother raccoon and her half-grown offspring. She led, it followed, right forepaw latched to her fur, left forepaw to the ladder, and two back paws planted on the step below. The kid was probaby scared and let mom know it at every step.

The 'coons were fifteen feet up a ladder that I leaned up one corner of the house and underneath a loose eave that I intended to repair. That eave, however, shelters starlings every spring (most recently, a nest of four) and a homeless squirrel most winters and I like their company.

I'm also sentimental about that corner that eave was a rotted mess when I bought this place and Ernie Jones wanted $50 to repair it. It was a good deal and one not to be repeated but I was broke and didn't get back to Ernie before his heart attack. I refused to let anyone else to the job and eventually bought pressure-treated boards and a 30 foot ladder. I measured angles, cut, ripped, tinkered, and nailed, and climbed up two stories with knees trembling and one paw on the ladder much like the adolescent 'coon. I carried a hammer in my belt and six nails between my teeth. I wore my wooden creation around my neck like a horse collar that I planned to slide up and over my head and into its place. The damned thing actually fit, first try! Because of sentiment or distraction, however, I never nailed it and the squirrel and the starling mothers discovered how to push aside the top ledge and nest inside the eave as they always did before.

The raccoons, however, were a bit much even for me.

I pulled on boots and jeans and picked up an ax handle as I stepped outside. The 'coons were down and I got a glimpse of two beige butts bumping along the grass and disappearing into my hedges. There was no more trilling but, instead, a single, deep, firm "woof."

I figured that the ball of fluff behind mom had to be not her daughter but her son...


JimB