Cycling in the South Bay

I was sitting on the floor reading, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something move.

“Fuck!” I thought, remembering that I’d left the back door open. It was 9:00 pm, prime raccoon time.

The hallway was dark, so I grabbed the flashlight. “C’mon, Snykes!”

He bounded up and led the way into the back room. I switched on the light. The raccoon was on the threshold but when he saw Snykes he came back in and attacked. It appeared to be the same raccoon that Snykes had tangled with a couple of days before.

The fight was horrible and lasted for over two minutes. A couple of times, Snykes had him by the throat, but he doesn’t have the killer instinct, and at the last minute he’d let him go. “Can’t you see I’m gonna win? Why don’t you just leave?”

Each reprieve led the raccoon to redouble his attacks, at one point climbing up on Snykes’s back. Eventually the raccoon had had enough, and retreated outside. Snykes went into the yard to make sure the raccoon’s exit was permanent. It had climbed over the fence but even so it charged the fence a couple of times, though it didn’t dare come back into the yard. Snykes didn’t budge until the coast was clear, no matter how much I called him.

Anyone who thinks wild raccoons are cute little critters is crazy. They are not afraid of anything.

Snykes came back into the house, and he was limping. That’s when I noticed blood all over the floor. The raccoon had gotten his teeth into Snykes’s foot, and torn away half of one of his foot pads. Now that the battle was over, the pain from his wound hit him. He could barely walk.

In a couple of minutes the bleeding stopped, but he has been unable to walk for three days now. The wound is getting better but it’s still incredibly painful. Since he can only hobble, he’s been spending most of his time in a sunbeam.

---

END

Comments are closed.