Raccoon looked forlorn. To be suckered into such a dilemma by a delicious scrap of beef t-bone and two old rotten chicken eggs of nestled halves and opened whole, was humiliating. Though two-legged scent lay about the vast yard in volumes too great to ignore, the bait smelled soooo great it drastically reduced raccoon’s caution.
Uffda, for stupid.
Being a teenager is a difficult time for even a raccoon, and now look at him. His mother had told him about days like this, but did he listen? No! He knew it all. He was too fast, too smart, too clever, too cocky. What was he to do? He gnawed on the bone as he thought about where he was and how it happened that he found himself--trapped--in a metal mesh cage under the shade of an ash tree, not 40-feet from a two-legged’s house.
It’s crap, just crap.
A movement from the back of the house caught his eye, as a two-legged slowly walked toward his place there, thrusting something in and out of his mouth hole with one of its hands and carrying in the other a large white poster-sized card of corrugated plastic, a scary sight to be sure.
So he laid himself down flat in the cage with even his ears laid back against the quaking gray-black fur of his body, his masked face and black shiny nose below the height of the mown-close green grass the cage was nestled in.
“Hide, hide, hide!” he thought to all parts of his body, as the two-legged strode closer, then suddenly veered away as off to the other side of the world. Raccoon rose to run away, then just as suddenly nosed against the cage wall mesh, and crushed himself back to the reality of being trapped with no way out.
Double triple crap!
The two-legged stopped where it was across the yard, and spit a beastly long sky-bluish string of wet into the grass from its mouth. What horror!
The raccoon grimaced and backed against the far wall of the cage too sickened to even think about what had happened. What was this manner of beast, this two-legged, that put a thing in and pulled a thing out of its mouth repeatedly, spat out a robin-egg blue ribbon of gore, and then walked about, making whistling noises, before it walked back into the house? This was gross beyond belief. He would so listen to his mother from now on! He wanted to puke, he was so scared.
Just that quick, the two-legged came from the house again and walked away. The raccoon turned against the far wall of the cage to make itself small, worried it may attract attention. He watched the two-legged open the door of a car, then go inside of it to start its engine, something he had watched from a safe distance on a bough of a tree, many times before. He let his body relax. Perhaps the two-legged was leaving.
But no, the two-legged drove the car in a wide circle, across the yard, coming to stop within a few feet of the cage and shut its engine off.
GEESUS! I am so screwed. I’ll never see my family again!
And raccoon began frantically digging through the cage openings as though all those previous hours of excavation meant nothing to his predicament.
The two-legged opened the door of the car, smiled at raccoon and said something monosyllabic that it couldn’t understand anyway, then walked away from the cage and went into its house.
Raccoon looked at the car, its size close-up, its smell, its colors. It worried him further that it was ‘there.’ It was different being close to it with no place to run, no chance to change his position or his location near it. All the other times he had been beside it, he was there because he chose to visit the two-leggeds in the evenings on his own terms. Now the choice wasn’t his. He was trapped. He was stuck in a box that he could see out of, smell the air around it, hear the birds, feel the dirt and grass beneath its paws, almost reach the tree, see everything up and down and overhead, and yet, not escape. Not get out. Not get away.
The two-legged came out of its house and walked toward the car and the cage carrying a plate of bacon fat scraps.
‘Ooooo,’ they smell GREAT!
But ‘grrrrrrr,’ he was not about to be happy.
But it ‘smells so goood.’
No, ‘Grrrrrrr!’ I’m not happy!
‘Yum....’ Wait. Grrrrrrr.
Maybe just a lick....
Oops, they’re at my feet! It’d be wrong to waste ‘em...
The two-legged smiled and chuckled about the angst he thought the raccoon felt, confused between wanting to escape the cage and wanting to stay and eat. Everyday, the two-legged knew, was all about eating for everything on earth. Life circled around it. Nothing was done without it, nothing lived long without it. Eating was everything's everything.
The two-legged walked to the back of the car and opened the hatch. Then it turned and looked at the raccoon in the trap and pulled from inside it a long steel rod that prevented the raccoon from tipping the trap over, and thwarting capture.
The two-legged laid the rod inside the car, turned back toward the trap, and slowly reached for its wire handle just above the frightened, growling raccoon’s outstretched nose. Lifting it, raccoon and all, the two-legged set the cage into the back of its car onto the white poster-sized piece of plastic it had laid there earlier. The raccoon walked from one end of the trap to the other, trying to nudge aside the trap door and escape. But it wasn’t frantic now. The two-legged closed the hatch gently, opened the drivers door, got inside the car and started its engine, opening the back windows to let the wind come in. The car began to move.
Oh crap!
A melody intruded from somewhere beyond the raccoon’s view. The car slowed. The two-legged’s head tipped forward and it raised its body upwards onto its right hip while it dug with its left hand for something along its left leg. Grasping the melodic thing, the two-legged placed it against its left ear, then uttered something unintelligible, although the raccoon was able to make out the sound, that made the vision of water appear in the raccoon’s brain and almost seem real. The two-legged assured the melody, there would be water nearby. The raccoon hoped he could make use of it.
Man, was he thirsty now.
The car slowly turned this way and that way as it moved down the farm lane toward the schoolhouse. The raccoon could see the tops of the spruce trees on occasion, and Mikinaak Creek sometimes. Oh, the fun times he had had there! Its bounty of frogs and tadpoles, grass snakes and snails were to die for, would he ever see it again? He was tired of this game, he decided. He’d fought the trap most of the day, and now he, and it, were on the move someplace.
Did he mention he was thirsty?
Suddenly the two-legged laughed loudly, and looked up at a tiny ‘window’ above its head. It put the melody to its ear again and talked into it, the way they do, those two-leggeds, and the raccoon ‘saw’ a ruffed grouse hen, that the two-legged said it had ‘driven over with the car but didn’t hurt it,’ that was perfectly camouflaged against the road. The two-legged said the hen was unscathed except for a look of bewilderment left on its face, and had the car been the low to the ground like the Escort, instead of high off the ground, like the Subaru, the bird would’ve been a cloud of feathers. Hooyah!
Turning onto the Wilson Road, the two-legged slowed the car. Not too far down the road, it saw something dark brown scurrying off into the road ditch on the west side. The two-legged stopped the car and got out with its camera attached to a tripod. Walking slowly, its finger on the shutter button, it saw a pair of wild turkeys in a field and suspected their young were nearby. Just then the two-legged’s camera battery began flashing red, and the two-legged, realized it had forgotten to grab the secondary battery and bring it along, swore. Damn!
Relinquishing the opportunity to film the turkeys, and the raccoon’s release as was planned all along, the two-legged opened the hatch and lifted the cage from the car, laying it swiftly onto the road, but without shock to its occupant. The two-legged knelt by the cage and unconvincingly told raccoon he was going to get released in just nine or ten seconds. He pushed a spring-loaded contraption against the front of the trap door and locked it open, the raccoon pushing close against it eagerly, to escape.
Stepping to one side of the trap, the two-legged, gently pushed the whole cage over on its side, and the raccoon shot out of the now-freed end of the trap like a fur-covered cannon ball. The two-legged left the rest of the bacon fat on the side of the road for a snack after the raccoon’s long awaited drink, then put the cage back into the car and drove home.
Slowing for what appeared to be a ruffed grouse hen on the road in the opposite lane, the two-legged awkwardly grabbed the camera and tripod from the backseat to take the hen's picture when the bird recognized the car and burst from the road, its wings going like ninety. The two-legged figured the bird had had a life-altering experience earlier, and had remained there, recounting it and all its feathers and toes.
An excellent "Day in the Life of ..." from multiple perspectives. Suspense at every turn! I loved the way that the two-legger complimented himself on his diligent mowing (paragraph 4) and the way that the identity of the two-legger was not revealed as the male of the household until paragraph 14. The readers imagination was forced to consider the machinations of the two-legger as both the domicile's male and the female before the "it" became a "he".
ReplyDeleteOne haunting question remains:
Did the raccoon permanently associate bacon with the exact proximity of the two-legger's domicile, thus beginning a lifelong quest of endless returns?
Holy buckets! This is one of your best ever. I particularly enjoyed hearing the experience from Raccoon’ s voice. Clever! I need to try that approach in my critter poems which I seem to be composing a lot of lately. I could empathize with Raccoon’s dilemma with the morsels of food – for me, it may not be food, but rather the unbearable attraction to writing, esp. poems. Both he and I are only ourselves when free of our “traps.” Raccoon’s repetitive thirst is another delightful, if pitiful, theme.
ReplyDeleteBut back to Raccoon. Loved his conversation with himself (Grrrr…) and found myself wanting more of the same. A very good sign. The following lines are a masterful take on a philosophy of life:
“Every day, the two-legged knew, was all about eating for everything on earth. Life circled around it. Nothing was done without it, nothing lived long without it. Eating was everything's everything.” I’m in the midst of a poem (forthcoming post) titled, “The Snake, the Frog, and Me.” Well, you can imagine! I say it may take a bit darker turn than Raccoon’s appetite, but still expresses your philosophy of “eat and be eaten.” Just occurred to me that despite the fact that few humans are physically eaten; however, we are the only species we know of that feels eaten by time. Ouch! Way too cerebral, eh?
The rough grouse ending is delightful. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this peek into life in the great northwest, although Raccoon is ubiquitous from the Rio Grande to Canada, and maybe there, too. Thanks for taking the time to write this great piece. Encore! Encore! How about one about the beavers?