Thursday, February 09, 2012

Night Of The Raccoon

Returning from the DMTC Board meeting last night, I went upstairs to the kitchen and got a banana. I went back downstairs, located Bailey the Rabbit, who was carefully hidden under some latticework in the corner of the back yard, and gave him a piece of the banana. Then, I went back upstairs and commenced the sort of aimless meandering that usually constitutes my hours at home.

About fifteen minutes later, I heard a loud growl outside the back door. The roar sounded a like a lion on the Serengeti Plains. I said to myself "Oh My God, a dog somehow got into the back yard and attacked Bailey!" I ran out the back door half expecting to find Cujo, with Bailey dangling from his jaws. Instead, I saw a large, hairy mammal clamber from the back fence onto a tree trunk, and rapidly climb upwards.

A raccoon! They're back! (It's been several years since I've seen one in the back yard, though). I ran back inside and grabbed a flashlight. I ran back outside and shone the light up the tree. The raccoon stared back down, it's eyes glowing satanically in the light.

Where's Bailey? The raccoon didn't seem to have him in the tree. The raccoon didn't drop his body into the yard next door. Bailey was absent from the place he had been hiding just a few minutes ago. I rapidly scanned the yard and the garage looking for a trace of the peripatetic rabbit.

After a second pass, I finally found Bailey huddling nervously under a wheelbarrow in the garage. I worried about Bailey possibly getting cornered in the garage, so I opened the basement door, in order to also give Bailey the labyrinth of boxes in the basement to hide, if necessary.

There is no door between the garage and the back yard - just a doorway fitted with a short rabbit gate - so I closed the rabbit gate and improvised a cardboard barrier to seal off the doorway. The purpose of the cardboard wasn't to make an impregnable seal, but rather to complicate the raccoon's efforts to get Bailey, if that's who he was after. The system wasn't foolproof: there is an empty window frame in the shed attached to the garage, so a clever and knowledgeable raccoon could still get entry into the garage, just like the neighbor's cats do. But sleeping fitfully just above the garage, I'd be able to hear the racket as the raccoon bumbled into shed, or crashed into the garage. I'd have time to run downstairs, and take action.

I wonder why the raccoon growled? To menace Bailey as he fled, or for some other reason? Raccoons like to travel in small groups, so I worried there might be other, unknown raccoons nearby that the raccoon was growling at.

The last several nights, I've awakened in the middle of the night to loud noises that, in the alert silence that followed, I couldn't attribute to anything. I had decided that I must have been dreaming about the loud noises. But maybe the noises were real, and derived from marauding raccoons.

In the morning's light, I removed the cardboard barrier. Leaving for work, I found Bailey in the basement's labyrinth, where he seemed to be at ease. I left him there, and hoped that raccoons didn't also hunt by daylight.

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