{"id":8357,"date":"2011-09-19T14:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T18:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8357"},"modified":"2019-03-11T10:36:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T14:36:19","slug":"perfect-moments-i-shot-im-paw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/perfect-moments-i-shot-im-paw\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Moments: “I Shot ’im, Paw.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\nT<\/span>he house in which The Missus and I live now is over twenty years old, as is our immediate neighborhood. But the area in general has only recently started to get built up. Real honest-to-gods wildlife, not yet squeezed out by housing and new roads, can still be spotted here and there — foxes, a rare deer, hawks and eagles, armadillos. We’ve heard reports of coyotes (although we haven’t seen any in the ten years we’ve been here), and a snake may show up from time to time.<\/p>\n

(One particularly heavy rainstorm drove some rattlesnakes up to our elevation. But that was very, very unusual.)<\/p>\n

Before moving here, though, The Missus and I lived over on the other (older) side of town. A wooded area abutted our back yard, true, but it was enclosed by shopping centers, apartment complexes, and the like. We had a good number of feral cats, which we caught, neutered, and re-released. But otherwise (and not counting everyday\u00a0North Florida fauna like opossums, little lizards and frogs), nada<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Except the raccoons.<\/p>\n

W<\/span>e’d heard lots of stories of raccoon incursion from neighbors, and from folks elsewhere. Raccoons would get into the trash, we were told. They knew how to raise the lids of trash barrels. They might even find their way into a house. You might come home, or so we were told, and find pantry and refrigerator doors open, cereal boxes and milk cartons torn into and their contents scattered. They could probably pick locks; they probably carried\u00a0rappelling\u00a0and other mountaineering gear in their knapsacks. The cute little bandito eye masks, it seemed, hid a darkly frolicsome nature just as effectively as they protected the creatures’ anonymity.<\/p>\n

At our place we happily experienced none of that. But we did have a running battle with them over the cat food we put out on the patio for the ferals.<\/p>\n

We didn’t begrudge them the food. But we did begrudge them their impatience. If they were civilized, we apparently thought, they’d wait in the breadline with all the other critters. We’d gladly refill the plates and bowls… once the cats had eaten<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But raccoons are not civilized. They grab handfuls of food, shove it into their maws, smear it all over their faces<\/em>\u00a0for crissake. And then they go to the water bowl, lap daintily for a second or two, and plunge their food-and-dirt-encrusted faces and paws into the remaining water — sliming it into impotability for anyone downstream (so to speak). Sated, they waddle off, picking their teeth.<\/p>\n

We chased them off repeatedly — always, it seemed, just a split-second too late. Maybe they weren’t waddling<\/em>\u00a0exactly, as we stood in the doorway, shaking our fists and calling out in our best You kids stay offa my lawn!<\/em>\u00a0voices. Maybe they were more like lumbering: hot-footed into motion. But you could hear them stifling giggles.<\/p>\n

Oh, we’d tried a variety of remedies — always factoring in that we’re both “animal people,” with no interest in physically harming wildlife. The one we had the highest hopes for was a Havahart trap<\/a> — a cage-type contraption with a spring-triggered floor. (You put the food bait all the way at the far end of the trap. When the animal enters to go after the bait, it steps on the trigger and the door slams shut behind. You take the cage somewhere else — out into the woods a good distance away, or to a wildlife-rescue facility if you’ve got one nearby — and open the cage.) We did catch an opossum with it, and we caught any number of the outdoor cats (probably starving for the raccoon-purloined goodies we’d left on the patio).\u00a0But we never caught a raccoon.<\/p>\n

It was driving me crazy. The Missus-to-Be thought it was hilarious. But I really started to take it personally. I’d taken to chasing the raccoons away and then waiting for them to reappear at the edge of the yard, whereupon I’d fling pennies in their direction. But I always ran out of pennies faster than they ran out of nighttime. (I tried nickels and dimes a couple of times until I suspected the raccoons might be collecting the coins to help them raid area vending machines. Probably for after-dinner cigarettes.)<\/p>\n

Over time, I learned some things about them. I learned that they startled easily. You didn’t have to yell and bang on pots. You could stand very still alongside the big oak tree on the patio, or just inside a screen door, and wait for them to appear, and just give them a moment before saying, quietly Boo!<\/em>\u00a0And they’d tear off across the yard.<\/p>\n

Great fun, no doubt. But it never kept them away for good, or even for very long.<\/p>\n

I considered — I’m embarrassed to admit this — I considered getting a slingshot. Just couldn’t bear the thought of actually hitting one with it, though.<\/p>\n

And then I had a brilliant idea.<\/p>\nA<\/span>t lunch one workday, I drove to a nearby toy store. I purchased something I’d never purchased before. I brought it home, prepared it per instructions, set out some cat food, and waited behind the big old live oak.<\/p>\n

Even with my hearing, I heard them before I saw them. Sauntering<\/em>\u00a0to the dinner table. Leaves crackled under their feet, and they chittered back and forth. (Hope it’s Fancy Feast tonight. Gettin’ sick of that Purina sh!t<\/em>. And so on.) And eventually, you could hear them at their repast — shoving the paper plates around on the brick surface and, y’know, slurping<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was time.<\/p>\n

Veeerrrrrrrrrry carefully, slooooowwwwwly<\/em>, I pumped my weapon. Peeked out from behind the tree. Only one varmint was still there. He was suspicious, all right, but he was also still hungry. Yet suspicious: he sniffed the air. He turned to face the tree…<\/p>\n

…sniffing, he stood up on his back paws.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I’d seen probably a hundred action films in which scenes of street combat played an important part. I’d also played numerous so-called “first-person shooter” video games. So I knew just how to time the sudden move. In one swift, smooth, sure motion I\u00a0wheeled<\/em>\u00a0around the tree, swung the giant two-handed Super Soaker<\/a> up to hip height, and pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n

I hit the sonofabitch right in the center of the chest.<\/p>\n

I’d never truly lived life until that moment. Raccoons, see — they think they’re so smart. Sooooo clever. You can’t surprise them. They take everything in (occasionally lumbering) stride.<\/p>\n

But this guy was surprised<\/em>. He was so surprised that he dropped immediately to all fours and started lumbering sort of zig-zaggedly across the patio, as though taking evasive action, rather than immediately lighting out for higher ground. I shot him once more, in the butt this time.<\/p>\n

And that apparently surprised him, too, because he decided not to run, but to climb.<\/p>\n

Which was, in a way, the most satisfying moment of all. Because, you see,\u00a0the tree he climbed wasn’t a real tree. It was a sapling. And as he scooted up to the top in all his catfood-besotted poundage, the top of the tree bent<\/em>, like a partial rainbow. He hung there like a sloth or an overripe coconut — mere yards away from the barrel of my weapon. I emptied the stream on him.<\/p>\n

Finally he dropped to the ground, found a more conventional straight-line escape route, and disappeared.<\/p>\nI<\/span> was laughing so hard by this point that I immediately ceased worrying about the raccoons’ raids. They returned a week or two later — I like to think my target had been demoted to lookout or getaway-driver status — but all my rancor had evaporated. From then on, until we moved, the raccoons would eat if they showed up. We’d rattle the door handle, the raccoons would leave, and we’d feed the cats. So it worked out all around.<\/p>\n

As for the Super Soaker? Retired.\u00a0I never so much as loaded it again.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

P.S. Brief admin notice:<\/strong> We’re having company this weekend, arriving Thursday. It’s gonna be a busy week in general. I’ll be posting a couple of times, Wednesday and Friday as usual, but probably automatically… and probably won’t be able to spend a lot of time visiting other sites until sometime early next week. If I miss you this week, I will catch up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

he house in which The Missus and I live now is over twenty years old, as is our immediate neighborhood. But the area in general has only recently started to get built up. Real honest-to-gods wildlife, not yet squeezed out by housing and new roads, can still be spotted here and there — foxes, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,16,38,410,599,405,713],"tags":[2593,2594],"class_list":{"0":"post-8357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-themissus","8":"category-backwards","9":"category-hearing","10":"category-perfect-moments","11":"category-nature","12":"category-humor-writing_cat","13":"tag-raccoons","14":"tag-when-humans-and-animals-collide","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2aN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8357"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20994,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8357\/revisions\/20994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}