And this is why my husband deserves a frigging medal and possibly a national holiday for putting up with me . . .

So Sunday night, we came home from a trip to Wilbur to find a skunk on our porch happily chowing down on the new bag of cat-food I forgot to bring in with the rest of the groceries. We ended up sitting there in the driveway for about 5 minutes before it realized we were there , got full , and left of its own cute little accord. Bill was astonished. I got about a 1 minute video of the little bugger stuffing its gobb and was amused as hell. To say that Bill and I have different backgrounds is putting it lightly . He's a WASP , and I'm a heinz 57 redneck. ITs like if the city mouse, and the country mouse got married, on crack. I digress.

I may have mentioned at some point in an earlier blog , that we share our domicile with two dogs ( among other creatures) and that Mister Dog is neurotic as hell ( Miss Dog is more of a 'who gives a shit' type personality). We have an alarm system, though I'm not sure why since thanks to Mister dogs neuroses we know the second ANYONE so much as sets a foot on our property. In fact , we are frequently awakened in the middle of the night by Mr. Dog because someone has had the audacity to use our sidewalk !

Last night was no exception , but with the previous nights skunk incident fresh in my mind , when he began his noisy tirade i decided to check it out. Sure enough , there was a stray cat out there helping himself to some grub , and Mr. Dog was furious ! The insomnia was still in full force so i decided to play on my ipad for a bit in the hopes of getting sleepy. Eventually I did begin to feel like I could fall asleep , so i got up to take the ipad to the kitchen and plug it in to charge. " I wonder. . ." I thought , " if that cat is still out there?" Mr. Dog was being very quiet. I walked over to the door , and looked through the glass, and what to my wondering eyes should appear ? But a whole bloody tribe of raccoons enjoying a buffet on my porch !  I counted four raccoons  ! Then I looked and realized there were another two hiding under the chair . " Good lord thats six raccoons ! " I had never seen that many in one place before .

Part of the problem was that I had got the trash out of the house yesterday, but it hadn't made it from the porch to the dumpster yet . This and the cat food had rolled out the welcome mat for the raccoons. I began to lightly tap my fingers on the glass to let them know they had an audience, and they began to dissapate, including two more raccoons that had been eating under the other furniture on the porch . Thats EIGHT raccoons ! Suddenly my porch had been turned into a friggin raccoon clown-car ! I knew I needed to get that trash to the can before I could go to sleep , or else spend the day tomorrow cleaning up loose trash all over my yard and driveway . The whole time all of this is going on BOTH dogs are asleep on the kitchen rug. I acquaint Bill with whats going on, and he goes straight to fearing that I am going to be devoured alive by rabid raccoons. I turn off the alarm and prepare to get er done. The only knowledge or experience i have pertinent to this coming from Forrest Gump " Raccons try to get on our back porch, Momma just sweep them off with a broom ", so armed with a broom , I went to work.

When I got back inside ( at around 3 am) the conversation went something like this ;

Bill: Are you OK ?

Me: Yeah, I'm fine, but the dogs are So fricking fired !

Bill: Why?

Me; The little sum-bitches when ape-shit over a damn stray cat , but when there is a damn racoon clown-car on our porch the little bastards slept through it like it ain't no thing !

Bill : Oh yeah . Fire them on the spot . Can't be tolerated . Define " Raccoon Clown-car ?"

Me; Oh, there was EIGHT blasted racoons on our damn porch .

Bill : EIGHT ? Holy shit .

Me: Well their gone now honey, its ok. Besided they were cute . all stuffing their gobbs with catfood and garbage :-)

Bill: Holy shit.

Me: Are you gonna be alright ?

Bill: Yeah, I think so. It's just , nothing like this has ever happened to me before .

Me: Really ? ( the idea that anyone can get to 65 without having had a run-in of this sort at some point amazes me )
Bill: Really.

Me: Are you gonna wig out ?

Bill: no i'm not going to wig out. I am only slightly wigged. I have just never experienced this before.

Me: Awwww, poor Bill ! You had your skunk cherry busted last night , and now tonight the grand racoon initiation. You've had a hard week haven't you ? Poor Bill ! There needs to be a celebration that you have reached this milestone , like a Bill's wild animal cherry-busting party.

Bill : you gonna put all that on the invitation are you ?

Me: Yeah, your right. It needs to be catchier and cuter .

Bill: Just a little.

Me: I've got it ! " Happy Coon-cinara Bill ! "

Bill : Lord help us .

Me: It's your Coon-cinara ! I'm so proud of you !

Bill : I'm going to be fodder for tomorrows blog-posting aren't I ?

Me: You better believe it .

Bill : Wonderful.

Me: I'm gonna see about getting some Coon-Cinara t-shirts made for your party ! Some little raccoons in tiaras in tu-tu's maybe ?

Bill : Oh dear.

Me: You would wear that , right ? It'd be cute wouldn't it ?

Bill : Uh, sure.

Me: I'm so excited !

Bill : Um, me too . But  how about we do some actual sleeping before the sun comes up today hon.

Me: Yeah, that would be good , I'm gonna Dream about your Coon-cinara !

Bill: Great.

Me: Happy Coon-Cinara honey !

( i know it was dark, but i'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes at me then )
Bill : Goodnight honey , I love you .

Me: Goodnight my Coon-cey ! I love you too !

Bill : This is going to be a thing now isn't it ?

Me: Yep.