intruder unmasked

We’d suspected for a while that, sometime in the night, fluffy masked bandits were making their way into our yard, digging up potted flowers, attending to the sorts of urgent mischief raccoons are inclined to commit.  But last night was the first time we’d actually seen one.

Well, for me, it was technically the second.  There was, of course, that mama raccoon who--when I was ten years old and inadvertently traipsed too close to her den full of babies--had engaged me in an adrenaline-pumping, high-speed chase through the vast field behind our house.  Even then I didn’t so much see her as I’d caught a glimpse of bobbing, blurring striped-tail fur gaining on my heels while the animal’s front end released a screeching, hissing series of what I’m fairly certain were species-specific expletives.  The experience made being grounded by my own mother seem rather tame by comparison, not that my own mom—sweet as she was—ever maintained the resolve to keep me grounded for more than five minutes before her eyes and voice would soften, urging me, instead, to go out and play.  As an introverted bookworm and all-around indoor animal, I’d argue the out-of-doors at that time was actually the greater punishment, but she genuinely meant well.  Fortunately, I didn’t get into much trouble as a child so my maternal-guilt-inspired brushes with nature were kept to what I then believed to be a healthy minimum.

Maisie, as a rule, barks at people, not birds or other mammals.  She is extraordinarily protective of us and all non-human visitors to her territory, but last night she worked herself into an unprecedented dither at the sight of something in the soft gray evening light.  Only twice in her life have we witnessed an extreme level of agitation in our girl—once when two boxers (dogs, not pugilists) came right up to the porch and stood there snarling at Maisie through the glass, though, to be fair, had Muhammed Ali and Sugar Ray exhibited the same window-side lack of decorum, I doubt that would have, in any way, altered our dog’s reaction.  The other incident involved a salesman whose incessant banging on our door and refusal to take no for an answer made him appear equally threatening to Maisie and, indeed, us.

Last night was different.  It was more than protectiveness, more than warning barks and menacing maneuvers.  There was a ferocity to our dog’s vocalizations and her movements that impelled both her parents to leave the comfort of the sofa and race to the window, where, based on the commotion, we expected to spy nothing less terrifying than Freddy Krueger himself.  The intruder’s claws did bear a minor resemblance to those of the sinister antagonist of the horror movie franchise (a genre of films I've gratefully never viewed), but that’s where any similarities ended.  On the other side of the glass, a raccoon stood upon her hind legs, making herself appear larger to frighten away our trusty guard.  Whether this hostile upright position spurred on Maisie’s acute defensiveness or the other way around, we’ll never know.  It is not like our girl to display any aggressive behavior toward other animals, but this one definitely spooked her.  It could have been the raccoon’s own bellicose bearing.  It just as easily could have been that Maisie had encountered one of the animal’s ilk before.  She had, after all, been abandoned by her first family, left to give birth to her litter of puppies—to rear them, to protect them—with no greater cover than a stranger’s porch, another favored hideout of raccoons.  Whatever the reason, we have now learned that these bushy-tailed, incognito denizens of our forest home are clearly the exception to Maisie’s love-thy-furry-neighbor mentality.

And while having raccoons on the property may not be ideal, for a number of reasons (Maisie’s safety foremost among them), there was something quite magical about observing one of these extraordinary animals from only a foot or two away.  They can be destructive, it’s true.  They can—when ailing or threatened—be dangerous as well.  But, as masked bandits go, they sure are beautiful.