Wild Encounters

I am so wonderfully blessed by friends. Anyone who knows me knows I love to talk… and although I often feel like I receive far more than I give, I love being able to walk into church and recognize faces, and have people stop to chat. I guess that is just one of those basic human needs… to know and be known, to love and be loved.

I got a short email from a friend the other day asking if I would like to have some fruit… what she didn’t know is that I have been puréeing everything in sight to turn it into baby food. I’m not exactly sure why I am doing this, as it doesn’t seem to be any cheaper than buying it at the store, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and it has been keeping me busy. So of course, I answered her email with a resounding YES I would love to have some fruit… I expected that she would email me back and we would make some kind of arrangement for me to go pick it up or something… she didn’t email me back, so I figured I’d hear from her the next day.

My son (who is now 3 1/2 months old) has his last feeding of the night at around 11pm and then goes to sleep for the rest of the night… so by midnight I am usually asleep in bed. Last night I slept pretty soundly. I woke up at 5:30 am just long enough to look at the clock, tell myself I had another hour before I had to get up, and roll over to go back to sleep. 5:45am… I hear soft clicking sounds outside the patio door in my bedroom. Instantly I am fully awake and trying to place the sounds… it sounds like wheels moving… the stroller was sitting out there… was someone trying to steal my stroller? It’s a piece of junk, who’d want that stroller? Maybe they got into the shed and were stealing the bikes? I momentarily think about what I’m wearing and wonder if my pajamas are appropriate attire to be confronting a thief… then I think I’m crazy for thinking about what I’m wearing while someone is stealing stuff out of my yard and I leap out of bed, fling open the blind… and I come face to face with a raccoon family, mama, papa and baby, sitting in a box of plums having a wonderful feast and throwing plum bits at each other. I stare at them. They stare at me. I don’t move. Neither do they. They are either stunned, or are cheeky enough to believe that I’m not going to come out there to get them out of the fruit… they are right. What do I do now? Why aren’t they scared of me? Aren’t wild animals supposed to be scared of humans? Isn’t that what they tell you about bears in the woods? Don’t worry, they are more scared of you than you are of them… HA!! Here I am standing face to face with three animals who are staring me down over a giant box of plums… I think they were lying about the bears. I think furiously about how I am going to evict these bandits from my fruit. A baseball bat? Don’t have one. Should I throw a shoe at them? The thought occurs to me that I have just given away all the old shoes, and the only ones within my reach at this point are brand new high-heeled boots that I am still contemplating taking back to the store. I started thinking about a show I watched on television the night before where this city girl goes to Alaska and a raccoon ends up sneaking into her hotel room, holing up in her closet and chewing her shoes to bits. I’m not going out there. Not with three precocious wild animals sitting outside my door. It’s just fruit. Finally after standing there for several minutes stunned at seeing raccoons in my backyard, the raccoons drop the plums and leave. I waited a few minutes just to make sure they were gone… and then cautiously opened the patio door and, concerned that the raccoons might come in my house if I leave the door open too long, I run back and forth as fast as I can bringing in the fruit. There were plums everywhere outside. I decide to leave them there just in case the raccoons decide to come back for more… I mean, the least they can do was clean up after themselves right? They didn’t come back… too bad… they were kind of cute.

Since going back to bed seemed pointless after such a bright beginning to my morning, I decided to check my email and do some writing. Upon checking my email, I found that my friend had emailed me at 9:30 pm the night before to tell me that she stopped by and left the fruit by the back door. I burst out laughing… and sent her back a thank you note.