I was attacked by a vicious gang of raccoons

May 16, 2007

I was sitting on my back porch, typing up notes from tonight's first orientation session for the Wayne County Time Bank, when I saw a black furry thing approaching fast from the left flank. I thought it was a cat at first because a cat had approached from the same vector just 10 minutes earlier. But then I noticed that this cat was not a normal cat, but a piebald creature with a huge arching back and a long pointy snout. And then I noticed that it was not a cat at all, but a killer raccoon.

Okay, I didn't have any proof that it was a *killer* raccoon, but you can't assume anything these days. And then I noticed that the killer raccoon had a small cat following it. And then I noticed that the small cat wasn't a cat at all, but a junior member of this roving gang of murderous raccoons. So I did what anyone surrounded by a gang of murderous raccoons would do: I emitted a high pitched anti-raccoon noise, interspersed with lower-pitched sounds that could have been heard as approximating English phrases like "please don't kill me" and "oh no, oh no, oh no."

These sounds had exactly the desired effect - shock and awe. The leader of the pair --er, gang retreated to a tactical position approximately 7 feet to my 2 o'clock, while the junior member lost geo-spatial orientation and proceed to scurry underneath my seat in an oval shape, about 2-3 iterations worth. This increased the pitch and intensity of my screams--er, warnings further, as the prospect of having a gang member sharing the same vertical airspace was not pleasing. When the leader realized that I had strategically separated them, it reversed its retreat and made attempts to reconnect with the rest of its team. I further increased the intensity of my firm imperatives to "git" and they eventually made a full retreat.

I realize that some of you might wonder how I can blog about this experience so soon after it happened without just completely breaking down, but I know it's my duty to share my bold example with others, so that they may be inspired by it.