Until I started writing this blog, I never knew what a major role raccoons played in my life.  As you saw in the photo of “The Visitor” we have some coons that have started the nightly ritual of trying to come into the house.  I manage to keep them at bay by putting food out on the patio.  Anyway, feeding coons has unfortunately turned into a family tradition.  My sister fed an old mama coon and her offspring for years.  My niece (who has never done anything embarrassing in her entire life) got “Maude” to eat bread out of her pocket.  Luckily, Maude stuck to eating just the bread and didn’t remove a mammary gland.  That would be very difficult to explain in the emergency room.  (It would also have given me something to write about.  How selfish of me.)

    However, my father didn’t have that kind of luck.  Being kind hearted souls, he and my mother decided to keep the coons from eating the cat’s food by giving them their own plate of food.  Apparently coons like to gossip because within a very short time, dozens of coons were visiting my parents deck.  They came in shifts.  Before they knew it, they were going through a fifty pound bag of dog food per week.  And if food wasn’t available when the next shift came in, the coons would bang on the patio door.  By the way, coons are opportunistic feeders.  Even knowing where food can always be found, if they run across a supply between home and the feeding location, they won’t show up at the regular place.  While I'm well aware that we shouldn't be feeding wild animals, sometimes it becomes an act of self preservation.

    So my parents had found themselves supporting a huge coon population...dozens of coons all fat and shiny.  They started to name a few of them.  There was one little guy in particular that was crippled or, to be politically correct, disabled.  In the raccoon population, they discriminate.  Trust me, if you are a disabled young coon, somebody is more than happy to take your food away from you and rip you a new one in the process.  Anyway, now my parents have an obligation...take care of “Junior”.

    They would put Junior’s food up on the handrail.  I don’t know what Junior’s particular disability was, but apparently it didn’t hinder his climbing.  Junior showed up one night with a huge tick on his back.  My father, feeling sorry for disabled little Junior, decided to help the handicapped.  He was going to remove the tick because, you know, Junior just couldn’t get his legs to work well enough to remove it himself.  So my father eases up to the little coon who was happily munching his Ol’ Roy dog food on the handrail.  Then with the greatest tenderness, he put his hand on Junior’s head and...Junior, not unlike a cobra, lunged and bit the stew out of him.

    The next day my father went to the doctor and got a shot or two and explained what had happened.  They decided that Junior probably didn’t have rabies so there wouldn’t be any real need to treat my father for it.  From then on, Junior still got his food on the handrail, but he had to take care of his own ticks.