You’re Never Too Old to Save a Damsel In Distress

My husband and I live in the urban suburbs. Over the years, we have made a certain peace with the critters that surround us — crows, ravens, squirrels, rats, mice, opossums, foxes, coyotes, and raccoons. After all, they were here first and there’s something sort of reassuring about nature reasserting herself where man has tried to take over.

“Cats with masks,” are what I call raccoons. And I do love cats. I’ve had cats as long as I can remember; the indoor/outdoor variety. They come and go as they please through our cat door. Which is where the problem started.

Years ago, when our kids were little, we used to keep the cat dish adjacent to the cat door. This was fine until the cute raccoons sniffed out our little arrangement and started coming inside.

There were several nights when we woke up at o’dark thirty, a raccoon’s favorite time for dinner, and had to chase them outside. This was huge fun for our kids. Not so much for us. Raccoons can be surly, aggressive and rabies carriers. And they’re not particularly afraid of humans.

Once, we surprised a mother and her three very cute babies. “Mom” made a great escape out the cat door whereupon she sat on the fence, just outside, barking at us as her three small kits lined up like a totem pole between our refrigerator and the wall. It took an hour for us to gently coax them outside.

Then for several years, there were no nocturnal visitors.

Cut to recently, and the pandemic had turned our urban paradise into a wild kingdom. We woke up one morning to discover that…something…had made its way through the house, stopping in my home office to eat multiple chocolates from my personal stash, before winding up in the kitchen, where he (she?) had consumed all of the cat’s food. The evidence, and paw prints were overwhelming.

My husband and I cleaned up, refilled the cat’s dish and hoped that maybe the chocolate would give the little fella a tummy ache and he’d decide not to come back. No such luck.

The next night, I caught the raccoon peering in the cat door, ready for his dinner seating. My husband ran up to the door waving his hands and yelling, chasing him away. Surely, that would do the trick! Nah….

The very next night, my husband heard a noise. Getting up, he peered out our bedroom door, where he saw our cat, crouched low, and the bag of chocolates in the middle of the hall. Quickly, he called the cat into our bedroom and shut the door, telling us both to stay inside. Now it was just him and the varmint.

I only wish I could have seen what happened next. I heard doors closing which, I assumed my husband was doing to confine the space. I also heard doors opening for potential escape routes. There was commotion and scrambling and the sounds of skittering paws on hardwood floors followed by the heavy footfalls of my husband thundering after it.

First the raccoon was in our kitchen, then up on the dining room table. It jumped to the front windows, clawing at the wooden shades trying to find an escape route. “Get out!” my husband hollered into the peaceful night, following with muted ‘thumps’ that turned out to be him swatting at the little critter’s backsides with a broom.

Another rumble down the hall followed and then a tremendous scratching of frantic paws against the back screen door before I heard the door give way just enough for the fat raccoon to slither through… followed by my husband, buck naked as the day he was born, chasing the raccoon down the path, security lights lighting up his spectral form as he firmly chucked the broom like a javelin, hitting the raccoon in his retreating rear end.

I wish I could say that we caught it all on the security camera, but we didn’t. I am, however, happy to say that our neighbors slept through the whole event. God knows, it would be tough explaining this ‘full Monty’ to them. Not to mention what the raccoon must have thought seeing this naked 66-year old man chasing him. I’m hoping it scared the appetite out of him because we haven’t seen the raccoon since.

As for my husband, this has now become the stuff of legend. And I know that if there’s ever a damsel in distress from a raccoon, my husband is the man to call.