April 19, 2008

• rocky raccoon

  we were in north carolina this past weekend and it was amazing!

  we (jack, toni and i) played golf.

  historic pinehurst no. 2!

  like i said, it was amazing. a guy named “bob” was our host and i must say that “bob” (unsure why “bob” is in quotation marks) was the perfect host.

  i’ve never felt as comfortable making a fool of myself in front of someone i didn’t know as i did with “bob”.

  you see, bob is a good golfer.

  he teaches golf.

  as in, he’s a professor at a college and golf is the knowledge he imparts.

  to play golf with a guy like “bob” – an accomplished authority on the game – should be an awkward enterprise for someone like me – unaccomplished, unauthoritative, unprofessorial, ungood at golf – but it was not.

  “bob” made us, me in particular, feel quite happy while disrespecting historic pinehurst no. 2 with such foul play.

  but this is all irrelevant information.

  here’s why i mention “bob”, and golf, and my unproductive attempts at swinging a stick at small inanimate objects: the scariest freaking squirrels ever are in north carolina. [!] i saw them. they are the size of dogs! seriously! well, not seriously. i mean, “dog-sized” would be a tad overstated. but seriously huge. like raccoon sized. in fact, they looked eerily similar to raccoons. i saw them. while playing golf with “bob”. they had little bandit masks on. just like raccoons. big, big raccoons.

  oh, one of the funniest stories i’ve heard involved raccoons.

  this is it, the story i find funny about raccoons:

  bwack, our drummer, was once my neighbor.

  he lived next door.

  well, not “next” door, as at the time we, my wife and i, lived in a tiny duplex, and, in technical terms, our “next door” neighbors would have been glen, a poet from arizona, the phoenix area i believe, and glen’s mother.

  bwack, our drummer, lived in an apartment that was next to the duplex, so i guess he was like our next door neighbor’s next door neighbor.

  i knew him, bwack, our drummer, as the guy constantly grilling enormous quantities of meat outside his apartment door.

  the atkin’s diet was popular at the time.

  he would pop out, poke at the meat, then disappear inside.

  his windows were covered with tin foil.

  we eventually befriended this reclusive meat cooking neighbor and that is how i came to know the story of the apartment raccoons.

  bwack, our drummer, was sitting on the toilet.

  he does this from time to time, the sitting on the toilet.

  so, he is sitting on the toilet when he hears the sound of scratching, emanating from the ceiling of his bathroom.

  the scratching sound seems to be coming from a point in the ceiling located directly between where he sits, hard at work, and the bathroom door, which is a good 6 to 7 paces away.

  bwack, our drummer, surmises that the scratching can only have as its source some type of large claw that in turn must be attached to some type of medium to larged sized animal, probably.

  and this is concerning.

  for obvious reasons.

  he is beginning to arrive at the conclusion that it may be in his best interest to begin preparations toward a speedy type exit becoming less than the untidy proposition it is currently.

  dust begins lightly falling from the source of the scratching noise.

  it’s kind of pretty, the dust falling.

  sort of slow-mo in its descent.

  but yes, dust is falling.

  whatever feral beast is tearing at bwack, our drummer’s, ceiling could very well be falling through the ceiling at any moment, landing on the floor blocking bwack, our drummer’s, only egress and it will most likely be pretty pissed, you know, after falling a good 8 feet to a tile floor.

  abruptly, a clawed hand pokes through the, now, hole in the ceiling.

  bwack, our drummer, sits watching.

  the clawed hand seems confused, you know, by the lack of substance, by the vacancy it has found while frantically searching for something to support the weight of whatever angry beast is attached to the clawed hand, and the frantically searching paw is having absolutely no luck finding such a place to place its weight.

  bwack, our drummer, still watching.

  bwack, our drummer has made no progress whatsoever toward graceful departure.

  a hairy gray arm, the one attached to the claw, becomes fully extended through the hole and bwack, our drummer is becoming less amused and faintly panicked, as well you can imagine.

  [now, seriously, what is one to do when faced with the possibility of a rabid coon (of course it’s rabid, what normal, peace loving coon rips at your ceiling while you’re serenely occupied with nature’s bidding!) coming through your ceiling and dropping to your floor in front of you with you in this most vulnerable of states?]

  thankfully, the coon, after much swiping of air, becomes bored or frustrated by lack of progress and withdraws the clawed-paw-gray-haired-arm but then has the gall to stare with one bandit-coon-eye through the hole at bwack, our drummer, before scampering off to enact more menacing coon-like activity in other parts unknown of bwack, our drummer’s, apartment.

  this staring is most offensive and completely inappropriate.

  bwack, our drummer, calls his landlord.

  he says, “landlord. there are coons in the ceiling. i am leaving to go out of town. i’d rather not have coons in my ceiling when i return.”

  the landlord responds, “no problem. i’ll take care of it.”

  bwack leaves and is abroad for a number of weeks.

  bwack returns to an apartment wreaking of coon death and buzzing with clouds of very large flies moving lethargically through the air, as in they are really slow, as in so slow you can thump them with your finger.

  he spends the better part of an afternoon swatting the air with a towel, resulting in a fly killing spree of epic proportions.

  with each fling of the towel, hundreds of lethargic fly lives are extinguished.

  the moral of the apartment raccoon story is this: if you are a landlord, and your tenant calls with knowledge of rodent infestation, do not throw poison in the attic and board up all possible exits to leave the rodents to die and rot in the texas-summer-attic-heat.

  also, golfers named “bob” are generally pretty cool.

  also, bwack, our drummer, doesn’t live in this apartment any more.

  

  • 9:11 pm
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