Raccoons, Politicians, and the Opposible Thumb
I don't know anyone who really likes moving once they get past the novelty as a young adult.
It's easier when you're young. For one thing, you don't really own anything yet. Your back doesn't sound like a rusty gate hinge with every box you bend to lift... and you haven't had enough misadventures yet that you can kick yourself when you overlook something that turns into a baptism of self abuse. Last year was tough but it seems to be settling down a bit finally, after the move from California back to the Midwest and then from a temporary place to something more comfortable and more permanent. Two moves in one year has been hard on these creaky old joints. Maybe I’ll be able to find the time to do more writing now that the dust is finally settling. There certainly isn’t any shortage of things about which to write these days and some of the subjects are complex enough they don’t suffer a short essay well.
Just a sidenote to myself: I know that by the next such occasion I will forget my own advice, but never look at houses when it's bright and sunny. Go look at it when it is pouring down on your potential residence and make sure that it doesn't rain inside. Some of us know these things intuitively, others learn them and still others tend to repeat mistakes like this more often than they would care to admit.
My wife and I are trying to quit smoking. We tried to "just stop," but we each wanted to remain alive, and obversely neither wanted to spend the rest of our lives in prison for strangling the other for snoring, or chewing our dinner in what was unmistakably a confrontational manner. So, we made a rule for our new place. We smoke only if we roll the cigarette ourselves and then smoke it outside. This turns smoking into something of a chore, and with the weather getting cold and wet, we have tapered off quite a bit. There are times that somethng that was once a comfortable part of ones life must be bid farewell and replaced with something less unhealthy.
I was sitting on the front porch smoking a not terribly well packed cigarette at 2 A.M. the other night. My back hurt and I was exhausted and I had been lifting and tripping over boxes all day, well in excess of my physical limitations. I had come to the end of my too long day and just needed to sit for a few minutes and do nothing much of any importance before retiring. I sat on one of our green plastic lawn chairs on the porch and took in the crisp dry air that comes after snowfall. Not much of a lawn yet. It’s still pretty much a big muddy mess, but the snow had turned everything into a clean sparkling white sheet of fluff under the moonlight. I heard a rustling of leaves and turned in time to see the masked eyes of a raccoon peering at me over the edge of the porch. I watched him, and he watched me, watching him... then he disappeared up the ancient oak at the side of the house with deliberate slowness. There was an arrogance about him that under different circumstances I could find endearing. He disappeared onto the roof somewhere.
His tiny paw prints in the silvery white snow looked kind of cute for the fraction of a second it took before I recalled how destructive raccoons are, and how willing to share living space with a human being.
This afternoon it warmed up a bit outside, the snow started melting, and it started raining inside. Not a little, but Niagara like. I have buckets lining my front entry below the area of the roof that nature's little bandit has torn to shreds. No one was available to climb up on an icy high pitched roof today to patch the leak and to run the little bastard out of the attic, so I had a nice long philosophical discussion with the new neighbor two doors down instead. We got talking and you know how conversations like that go. We started out with a short subject and turned it into a novel, but it took my mind off the fact that a waterpark had opened in the middle of my foyer... in the middle of winter. Raccoons tend to be a bit disrespectful of rules and polite limits and they have no concept of the rule of law. They live in a world designed and patterned after their own perceived immediate needs and desires and in that way are not unlike politicians at times.
We talked about the weather and whether the strange season it had become was due to global warming or some other process... and we talked a little about raccoons, and the mischief that creatures with opposable thumbs get up to. We discussed solutions like mothballs and smoke as removal strategies and what should be done about him in strictly hypothetical terms. We balanced the merits of various means by which to prevent him causing more problems than he has already. We pondered whether there was some sort of retribution that was appropriate, but I came to the conclusion that getting him out and repairing the damage was the primary concern and if we could do that, things could get back to a little sanity and it would all be better without the need to exact revenge. Even on opposite sides of the fence we seemed to be seeing eye to eye on the important issues. We agreed that removal would be an expensive process, and would possibly result in a lot of talk and gossip on our side of the hill. We both agreed that under ideal conditions, the best solution was to just wait him out and let time and attrition oust him, but not at the cost of another American soldier on the casualty list.
Then we talked about the raccoon again, and he gave me the number for local animal control to make arrangements for a live trap.
It's easier when you're young. For one thing, you don't really own anything yet. Your back doesn't sound like a rusty gate hinge with every box you bend to lift... and you haven't had enough misadventures yet that you can kick yourself when you overlook something that turns into a baptism of self abuse. Last year was tough but it seems to be settling down a bit finally, after the move from California back to the Midwest and then from a temporary place to something more comfortable and more permanent. Two moves in one year has been hard on these creaky old joints. Maybe I’ll be able to find the time to do more writing now that the dust is finally settling. There certainly isn’t any shortage of things about which to write these days and some of the subjects are complex enough they don’t suffer a short essay well.
Just a sidenote to myself: I know that by the next such occasion I will forget my own advice, but never look at houses when it's bright and sunny. Go look at it when it is pouring down on your potential residence and make sure that it doesn't rain inside. Some of us know these things intuitively, others learn them and still others tend to repeat mistakes like this more often than they would care to admit.
My wife and I are trying to quit smoking. We tried to "just stop," but we each wanted to remain alive, and obversely neither wanted to spend the rest of our lives in prison for strangling the other for snoring, or chewing our dinner in what was unmistakably a confrontational manner. So, we made a rule for our new place. We smoke only if we roll the cigarette ourselves and then smoke it outside. This turns smoking into something of a chore, and with the weather getting cold and wet, we have tapered off quite a bit. There are times that somethng that was once a comfortable part of ones life must be bid farewell and replaced with something less unhealthy.
I was sitting on the front porch smoking a not terribly well packed cigarette at 2 A.M. the other night. My back hurt and I was exhausted and I had been lifting and tripping over boxes all day, well in excess of my physical limitations. I had come to the end of my too long day and just needed to sit for a few minutes and do nothing much of any importance before retiring. I sat on one of our green plastic lawn chairs on the porch and took in the crisp dry air that comes after snowfall. Not much of a lawn yet. It’s still pretty much a big muddy mess, but the snow had turned everything into a clean sparkling white sheet of fluff under the moonlight. I heard a rustling of leaves and turned in time to see the masked eyes of a raccoon peering at me over the edge of the porch. I watched him, and he watched me, watching him... then he disappeared up the ancient oak at the side of the house with deliberate slowness. There was an arrogance about him that under different circumstances I could find endearing. He disappeared onto the roof somewhere.
His tiny paw prints in the silvery white snow looked kind of cute for the fraction of a second it took before I recalled how destructive raccoons are, and how willing to share living space with a human being.
This afternoon it warmed up a bit outside, the snow started melting, and it started raining inside. Not a little, but Niagara like. I have buckets lining my front entry below the area of the roof that nature's little bandit has torn to shreds. No one was available to climb up on an icy high pitched roof today to patch the leak and to run the little bastard out of the attic, so I had a nice long philosophical discussion with the new neighbor two doors down instead. We got talking and you know how conversations like that go. We started out with a short subject and turned it into a novel, but it took my mind off the fact that a waterpark had opened in the middle of my foyer... in the middle of winter. Raccoons tend to be a bit disrespectful of rules and polite limits and they have no concept of the rule of law. They live in a world designed and patterned after their own perceived immediate needs and desires and in that way are not unlike politicians at times.
We talked about the weather and whether the strange season it had become was due to global warming or some other process... and we talked a little about raccoons, and the mischief that creatures with opposable thumbs get up to. We discussed solutions like mothballs and smoke as removal strategies and what should be done about him in strictly hypothetical terms. We balanced the merits of various means by which to prevent him causing more problems than he has already. We pondered whether there was some sort of retribution that was appropriate, but I came to the conclusion that getting him out and repairing the damage was the primary concern and if we could do that, things could get back to a little sanity and it would all be better without the need to exact revenge. Even on opposite sides of the fence we seemed to be seeing eye to eye on the important issues. We agreed that removal would be an expensive process, and would possibly result in a lot of talk and gossip on our side of the hill. We both agreed that under ideal conditions, the best solution was to just wait him out and let time and attrition oust him, but not at the cost of another American soldier on the casualty list.
Then we talked about the raccoon again, and he gave me the number for local animal control to make arrangements for a live trap.
posted by Wolfe at Large at 12:54 PM
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