Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Two Raccoons In One Night

Raccoons frequent our apartment complex a lot.  When it was summer and the sun did not set until 8:00, we would often see a mom raccoon and her four babies scampering across our porch in search of food.  I would scream with delight cause those little raccoons were so cute, and would beg Cy to leave Oreos out for them.  I have no idea why, it's not like Oreos and raccoons are a marketing technique that I have fallen for, I just seem to think those little thieves would get a kick out of that delicious treat.

One night, I left the sliding glass door on our porch opened as I was sitting out there doing some post-run stretches.  I left it open to give Cy some fresh air as he was diligently putting together our dining table.  (Do you see something wrong here?  Cy is doing the work and I am running?  You may think that I just don't want to help or perhaps that I am not skilled enough to do the table, and I get so cranky that Cy lovingly suggests that I go on a run to relieve my stress.  It's the second one.)  I got out of the shower, and I hear Cy clapping and making loud yelling noises.  Turns out, the raccoons were scampering across our porch, saw the door open and began to enter our house!  Cy looked up just as the mom was almost completely inside, followed closely by four little ones, and started to scare them off.  They ran away, cause they are all bark and no bite with those bandit masks on, and I got so sad because in all the confusion of the get away plan, one of the little ones ran into a wooden pole.  Poor guy.  However, I am sure he is fine, they have been back numerous times.

I love to see the raccoons.  They are so exciting and it's like a trip to the zoo but with the best seats in the house...and it's free.

So last night we are walking out of our apartment complex to return a movie when we hear a rustling in the bushes.  As we look over our right shoulders across the small "stream" of sorts, we see a raccoon staring at us!  In my excitement and fear I wanted to take a picture, but the fear won out, so we kept moving.  Shortly there after we arrived at Albertson's.  Still hyped about the raccoons, I was singing along to the 80's music they were playing and was insisting that we look at the hair dye to find ideas for "a good fall color."

Finally, we decided it was time to leave and started to make our way to the exit.  I heard a rustling, and again (like the friend at the "stream") looked over my right shoulder in the middle of the candy isle at Albertsons and saw another raccoon of sorts.  Expect the only thing these two had in common was their theivery.  That's right!  This bandit was placing a bag of Peanut M&Ms in his Jnco jeans.  We made eye contact, and he immediately took them out of his jeans, but kept them in his hands and walked down the isle.  I stared at Cy with wide eyes and explained what I had seen.  We then rounded the corner and there was the human-raccoon!  He saw us, no M&M's in hand, walked back down another isle and emerged with a bottle of Advil.  He then walked straight out of Albertsons.  I was in shock.  Did he steal it?  Maybe he just put the bag down in another isle?  We had no idea what to do.  We left, sort of saddened by this possibility and made our way to our car.

THEN, as we are driving home, we look to our right and there he is, in his truck, eating what seemed to be delicious candy covered chocolate in some sort of yellow bag.  We turned separately before we had time to do anything, and the rest of the ride home was spent in silence as I began to think of calling the police and then being met by him months later after he served his time for the M&Ms, in the middle of Albertsons with fire in his eyes.

3 comments:

Kristina P. said...

Wow! I don't think I've even actually seen someone shoplift before. I just deal with the kids afterwards.

Shey said...

the real question is....did you decide on a hair color?

Heather of the EO said...

That's a funny story. Even if it has sad stealing parts.

Miles says, "I will tell the people that when they're buying stuff they need to go to the counter and buy it. Otherwise, they have to go back and buy the stealing m and m's." Oh, such a wise three year old.