orange and raccoon

sunday 24 july 2011


Once again, I hauled myself to the river early this morning. Earlier than I usually make it out nowadays: five o'clock. For four and a half years it was routine for me to go out at five with my dogs, but that's all four years gone now, and five o'clock is often unappealing now that I have no dog to walk with. Mental hell.

Making it even less appealing today was the extreme humidity. In the last seventeen days, we have had only one day off from the monstrous wet air, and I simply can't take it. The longer such humidity lasts, the more irritable and physically sick I become. The less willing I become to move at all, because literally the instant I move, I'm covered in sweat.

It was only the memory of my dogs... my great, great dogs... that got me out the door at five a.m. in this vicious weather. Hating to face the stifling air and already exhausted from working on a song for three hours yesterday, and another two hours on a drawing. But because I happened to be awake, and because it was my old dog-walking time, and because I need to remember my dogs, I went.

I had no intention of staying out there very long. Just a quick tour along a part of my old dog route, then back inside this ponystall with a fan blowing on me. Those were my intentions. But you never know what nature's intentions are, and those can change from one moment to the next.

I was out there an hour, and it was all because of raccoons. I haven't seen a raccoon since 2002 (nine years!), and this is nearly shocking when you consider that between 1985 and 2002 I saw raccoons in this town all the time. In my yards, on porches, murdered in the streets by drivers. All the time. So to go nine years without seeing even one raccoon is maximally weird. And I didn't just see one raccoon on the riverbank at about 5:20 when this day began... I saw five. More raccoons than I've ever seen in my life all at once. The one and only time I've ever seen a mother with a litter. I spent about forty minutes watching those animals, talking to them, until they went back to their den to go to sleep. I saw them walk all in a line behind their mother, saw them all five up a tree while I stood there studying them and talking to them, saw the eastern sky behind them and their maple tree turn orange: five masked faces watching me from tree crotches against a background of unabashed orange.

I saw the children climb all over the place, heard the mother make a noise like cat purring in her throat, watched her nurse a baby right there in the tree. Afer they'd come down from the tree and crossed the street (mental hell: will they get across safely?), I saw them sitting in a row on top of a sort of fence, just sitting there relaxing. And I, on the opposite side of the road, am anxious: No, no, I say. Don't sit there all in a row like that in full view of the humans. You don't know what they'll do to you. Go now, go back to your den. It's daylight. It's time for bed. Don't let the humans see you. As if she'd heard and understood my words, the mother climbed down with the kids following after, and they went back into their den. Now I know where it is. My lips are sealed.

Brief research I just did yields disparate results: some folks say baby raccoons are called kits (like foxes), others say cubs (like bears). Since pandas and raccoons and bears are all related, I make the unilateral decision to call their children cubs. The only foxy thing about them is the triangular, pointed face. When you watch them move, they move for all the world like little bears. Bears with tails; tails with black rings around them.

Whatever other things a walk at the river may be for me, it is always mental hell. Because I walk there alone now, without my dogs. Because my last two dogs were stolen, hidden, and killed by vicious, spiteful, ugly human beings. It is always, without exception, a walk in mental hell.

But my love for animals and my fascination with them is so great that even in my hell, my rage and grief, I am charmed, dazzled and transfixed by the creatures around me. Even as I rage at the theft of my two dogs with every step, I stand in front of the maple tree full of raccoons and study them, love them, talk soothingly to them. I'm dazzled and can't tear myself away, though breathing the noxious air is making me suffer. I hold my breath while they cross the road, fearing an ignorant and nasty human behind the wheel of a car. I thank them, repeatedly, for being there. Thank the mother for bearing the anxiety my presence is causing her, apologize to her that I can't yet bring myself to walk away.

They're safe in the den now, sleeping. I want them to be safe forever, to live to be very old raccoons and die peacefully in their sleep. I want them to have plenty to eat, and some fun, and good water, and any other blessings I could wish upon raccoons. All in vain. Because they live in the center of a town, not in some remote woods. Because humans in general hate raccoons and love to hurt them if they get the chance: I've seen it all my life. Because they drive their bleeding cars and don't care. So many of them barely give a dog or a cat a chance, let alone some wild animal.

I send my wishes for them into the new-morning air, into the orange, into the nearly colorless haze when the orange fades away. I try to fill every molecule of the air, plants and trees with my raccoon wishes, with my dog rage, with my love for all that's beautiful and my loathing for the vast seas of ugliness that gush from humankind.

In readers, my distaste for homo sapiens will be resented, is always resented. I tell the truth in my blogs, my books. And one of my truths is my dislike of the human race. If you can't read my writing and understand how I've come to this repugnance and bitterness, then I can't help you expand your capacity for understanding.

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read... Stolen stars... Spite and malice... Soulcast...

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