When I was growing up in a house in Maryland set back in the woods that ran alongside a ten-mile-long watershed preserve, one of the signs of spring was having a pregnant raccoon fairly often at the back door at dinnertime, nosing around the dining room window while we ate a few feet away, ready to saunter inside and swap recipes with Mom.
I remember the ugly rat-nosed possums that fell into the trashcan, and, unlike the raccoons, who had so kindly lifted the lids off for them, couldn’t always hoist themselves back out. Dad would tip the can over, give its metal bottom a good thwack with a broom (we had a genuine Fuller Brush Man model, with a metal handle), and go back inside. You couldn’t scare the thing out, he’d learned, it just faints on you and there it is; you’re certainly not about to stick your hand in and pull it out, either. But you want to teach the thing that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, a booming thwack to reverberate in its ears a moment, a retreat, a wait for it to come to, and a hope that you made it a sufficiently unpleasant experience that it leaves.
Maybe after it’s eaten its dinner in there. All in good time, my dear man, all in good time.
We occasionally, somewhat despite our parents’ common sense, opened that back door and tried to feed the mom-coon out of our hands. It was so cute; what we really wanted to do was pet it. But there was a particular one that liked the smells that were behind us better than the stuff we were offering, and tried to slip quickly past the two of us kids sitting on the stoop and zip right on in and help itself. You know how moms are. They’re used to being in charge. We jumped quickly together to block it, and it thought better of it, but only quite reluctantly. It turned back around towards us, ready to make another attempt. That got us an, “Okay, kids–time to close that door!” And that was the last time I remember us trying to do that.
While my computer is being a cat arching its back and hissing at my camera, one of my readers sent me a picture of the friendly animal she’s got in her back yard that comes peering in the window hoping for a meal. Tunie has named him Rupert. Just don’t open the door, ‘k?
