Strange Happenings

JF and I were watching TV in bed early last night, just being lazy on a chilly (to us) and rainy Saturday, when suddenly, we heard a loud "THUMP!" outside on our front walkway. Now, our house is surrounded by trees -- so much so, that if you try to Google Earth our house, you see one sliver of house, and mostly trees -- and we often hear pinecones thudding to earth during windy days. But, this wasn't a pinecone. It would have had to have been a giganto-cone in order to make the thud we heard.

JF went to the front door to investigate. "Uh....hon? Could you come here?" I got up and went to the front door, only to see JF with his nose pressed against the glass of the storm door. "It was a raccoon!, " he said, and pointed out towards the rainy night beyond our front steps. Lying on our walkway was a very stunned middle-sized raccoon. At first, we thought he had fallen off of our roof. This was a likely scenario, as we've seen raccoons up there before, drawn by the cat food we left outside for Blackie, our extra kitteh, and by the honey birdseed cake we hang in the big cedar tree right at the front of our house.

The poor little guy tried to stand up, but his hind leg wasn't working properly, and he fell over. He struggled to get oriented for a few minutes. JF and I both felt bad because we wanted to help him, but there was no way of knowing if he'd attack in his pained state, or if he was rabid or not. He seemed fairly calm, but then again, so did Cujo at first. I walked off to go to the bathroom, and JF wandered around to make sure both of the kittehs were safely inside. When we came back to the storm door, Mister Raccoon had disappeared. JF checked in the yard, all of the shrubs, and under both of our cars -- no raccoon. He was not moving very fast, so he probably didn't venture across the street.... As we sat there, pondering where he went, a large SPLAT! hit the pavement. It looked like vomit, to be honest. JF traced the trajectory, and up in the cedar tree, he saw four pairs of glowing eyes staring back at him.

We think maybe Mr. Raccoon was up in the tree to begin with, and fell out somehow. Maybe the branches were slippery from the rain. And, our cedar tree exudes this orange-y colored jelly instead of sap, so maybe he slipped on that. After his fall, he crawled back up the tree to where his "family" was, so they could take care of him. We think the vomit-y stuff was either him being sick after the fact, or a warning for us not to get too close, or it could have even been excrement, where he literally got the crap knocked out of him.

We just hope he's okay. I can just hear the raccoon gossip network..."Frank got so drunk the other night, he fell right out of the tree! Scared some poor human family out of their minds! That'll teach him to drink that cheap malt liquor!"