Nicholas and I would like to share with you our profound sadness over the loss of a larger-than-life figure, who is etched indelibly in our memory.
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| No, not this guy. |
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| THIS GUY! |
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning...The gigantic raccoon--whom you may remember from other blog entries, such as
lf the whole world moved to their favorite vacation spots, then the world would live in Hawaii and ltaly and Cleveland--showed up in our backyard again the other day. Obviously we were surprised that the critter was bold enough to show his face around here again after the extent to which we previously scared him (minimal). Actually, the most surprising part was that it was broad daylight and raccoons are known to be nocturnal, which means that they usually only come out to forage in response to auditory stimulus provided by this guy:
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| Too esoteric? |
Editor's note: Being nocturnal has nothing to do with response to Chopin's Nocturne.
At any rate, there was the raccoon staggering around our yard like a Harvard sociology major after a kegger.
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| Harvard sociology major after kegger |
So naturally we were concerned. Our first thought was that this golden retriever-sized raccoon was probably rabid and we should keep our distance. But he made it difficult to avoid him when he decided to charge the house
And then curl up by our back porch
where he decided to stay almost motionless for a good 6-8 hours, moving only to glare at us when we went to check to see if it was still alive (Nicholas) or give it the finger and squeal (Wendy).
So at this point we had to decide what to do with the lurking raccoon. And since we have such good boundaries with feral animals,
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| We don't |
and we would never take one in and try to integrate it into our household,
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| We would |
we decided to call animal control and see if we could get the mammoth raccoon exterminated. And that was when I learned the most important lesson that I've learned since moving to Cleveland (Thanks, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences): Spring and Summer are "rabies seasons". Fall and Winter are "old animals crawling out to die seasons". So rather than incur the cost of having animal control out to trap the colossal raccoon, we took their advice...which was to leave it alone and if it died in our yard to put it out on the curb for the trash (Cleveland Heights, you are a classy, classy town).
And so we mourn the loss of a very sick, very large raccoon. If I got one more chance to talk to him I would say, "Old buddy, come trash day we're going to give you a cozy resting place right in between my empty seltzer bottles and the giant bag filled with soiled kitty litter"...and then I'd probably give him the finger.
The final lesson that we'd like to share with you, our family, is this: if you happen to look outside this winter and see one of these:
Or perhaps, one of these:
don't be afraid. Just remember that they're old and sick and just coming out to die.
