Rocky Raccoon

I’ve been treated to quite the menagerie since moving to the ridge—everything from cute, twitch-nosed bunnies to the ugliest flying beasts ever designed by nature (buzzards, who apparently missed the “soar gracefully” memo). But one creature had remained conspicuously absent from my personal wildlife encounters: the raccoon.

Oh, I’d seen evidence of them, mind you—mostly in the form of flattened remains along the backroads. And Willie has managed to catch a glimpse of one in the backyard. But I’d never seen one alive, waddling its bandit self across our property… until this morning.

I had just stepped out of the barn when I spotted it—caught mid-heist, attempting to climb the back stairs to the house. For a frozen moment, we locked eyes. I couldn’t decide if I should yell and charge like a deranged farmhand or quietly retreat before it decided I was the problem. The raccoon, apparently, was having the same internal debate.

It was enormous. Not “adorable woodland creature” enormous, but “may have its own zip code” enormous. If he had stood up on those stairs, he could have done a fair impression of Rocky Balboa! After a tense standoff worthy of an old Western, time snapped back into motion: he took off toward the woods in a slow-motion waddle, and I spun on my heel and dashed back into the barn.

He vanished in seconds, but I suspect our paths will cross again. Probably on trash-day.