Posted by cav on December 22, 2004 at 09:35:58:
In Reply to: Now that was stupid posted by PS on December 21, 2004 at 20:07:20:
Great story. Just to illustrate the mortal peril you actually faced in such a situation, I remember several years ago before Westchase was the buzzing center of over-priviledged mass-consuming Vogue & Maxim clones it is today, there was a great deal of open land there, and many many raccoons. They would frequently come into the recreation center there to clean up after the little yupplets who had dropped their ice cream and cheerios. No harm no foul, right? They didn't come while people were around, so the staff let them be. Until the rentacops discovered them, and decided they were amusement enough to let their crop of pot go for a few nights (yes they were actually growing it in the medians of the road. I guess they didn't realize exactly how tall those plants got...but I digress). So they decided they must deal with the threat and arranged for a trapper to come remove them. The trapper left a 24hour number and told them to call as soon as they saw an animal in the trap. But of course, somewhere in the purple haze the rent-a-slackers didn't realize that the fee included the removal and thought they could save the community some money by driving the raccoon to the nearby woods and dumping it. So after the typical prodding and teasing they drove it to the woods and opened the cage. Of course the animal was smart enough not to come out, so they decided to poke at it from one side and pull from the other. As you can imagine the raccoon had enough and launched at them both. By the time it was over, the raccoon had wandered quickly back to the rec center, a mere quarter mile away, and the two rent-a-cops spent the night in the emergency room.
: Those of you who know us know that we have a pet raccoon named Rush. You also know that our large back porch is sectioned in halves by a large wood frame wall with mesh wire that I built.
Rush's side is not the side with the door to the backyard. In other words, he would have to go through 2 doors to get outside, which is very safe.
: Well, anyway, I was taking out the trash tonight, and I walked into the porch from the outside to get a trash can on the porch. Lo and behold, Rush was climbing up the mesh wall, as he often does, only he was on the wrong side of the wall! Now I was amazed and wondered how in the world he had accomplished that trick, but as I am used to such miraculous puzzlements, and being the eternal pragmatist, my first concern was to move him back to the other side of the porch where he belonged. I reached up and scratched his back to say hello and he kind of growled. I though he was just a bit freaked out to be in the wrong place. So I told him he was a good boy and held up my hand for him to sniff. He did, and then growled again, jumped down, and ran out into the yard and climbed a tree.
: I then found out that Rush was on the other side of the screen, under his covers fast asleep, and never even knew he had a visitor. Yes, that's right. I just fearlesly walked up and petted a wild raccoon.
: How did I survive this long?