close encounters of the RACOON kind
I was upstairs listening to a painful baseball game, and Leah was watching the tv downstairs; she heard some disturbing noises coming from the direction of the kitchen and called me down to invistigate; I crept into the kitchen and indeed, there were noises, but they weren't coming from within. No, they were coming through the open window, and I instantly identified the source: racoons! Racoons in the trash, to be precise.
Having previously witnessed the devestation they could cause to a poor defensless kitchen trash bag, I of course leapt into action: flung open the door, jumped out and gave them my best growl. It works on squirrels... The three racoons munching away down there barely looked up. They did, however, grudgingly back up a few feet when I went down the porch stairs, and then a few more feet when I grabbed a dowel and started waving it at them. They looked at that point like they were giving up, so imagine my suprise when, after I had stowed the trash can safely indoors, I turned around to see one of the racoons watching me from less than ten feet away. They're cuddly enough creatures and all, but there's something unsettling about animals--wild animals, allegedly--being that fearless. Although, I threw some stuff at em too and hit one of em a few times, and that didn't have any particular effect either; so maybe they're just dumb. In any case, one of them got a little bit of a mean out of something they managed to extract before I got the can away from them, I got a number of flash photographs of him. Or her, I suppose.
It's like we're living in a jungle out here!