For the past few summers we have noticed that some raccoons have been getting on to our back porch via the cat door and sampling the cats' food. This year to avoid that, we put the cat food inside. Our girls have fortunately outgrown the cats' water mixed with the cat food stage. A few weeks ago, we heard a loud disturbance in the dining room early in the morning. Assuming that cats had just brought in another not-quite-dead prey we ignored the crashes and went back to sleep. What a disaster in the morning! The bread was ripped out of its bag and mauled. The bowl of flowers from Kendall's and Maia's wedding reception was missing half the water (don't worry, we found it all over the table and floor) and the flowers had had all their petals plucked off and scattered. There was more chaos, which we thought weird. Since when do cats maul the bread? Why would they take the cereal out of our church bag on the front porch?

Well, about 5 a.m. the next day, I heard a racket in the kitchen. I went in, and saw a large raccoon trying hard to get at our fruit. Great. The raccoon wasn't happy being denied it's winter food source and had decided to come into our house. Sigh. I grabbed a broom and chased it out. Next morning, we hear a sound at 4 a.m. I told Kevin it was his turn this time. He went in, chased the coon out of the kitchen, but found not just one, but two coons in the house. Really lovely. Now, this time they weren't content to stay chased out. Poor Kevin spent the next few hours chasing one coon after another out of the house.

Well, this time he figured out how to block the cat doors to prevent ingress at night. Several more nights passed coon free, until Sunday night Kevin fell into an exhausted stupor at 6 p.m. following a night of writing a web site. I went to bed at my usual bedtime, and lo and behold, about 5 a.m. here comes a sound from the front porch. I got up, and there was a raccoon, on the monster's aquarium, trying to catch himself an oscar. I grabbed the nearest thing (in this case a fish net) and tried to chase him out. No can do, he ran UNDER the aquarium. Arglefraster! I called Kevin, and he came in, and tried to chase out the coon, hit the coon or anything else. He got several good blows in, and the coon started crying. I didn't know they could cry, but it sounds a lot like a laughing dove. Finally the coon got enough sense to run out the back door.

I hope it was hurt enough that it decided that this isn't the best surf 'n' turf restaurant on the block. So that was our adventure for (hopefully) some time.