Here it was, almost nine o’clock already, thought Otto, an old man living on a pension in Edgewood, Washington, a small hamlet south and east of Seattle. Observing that it was inky black outside at this time of night, Otto flipped on the back porch light and waited for “them” to arrive. He shuffled to the kitchen and opening the fridge, extracted more than thirty one-pound packages of weenies. Leaning over the table, he began breaking open the packages and depositing the many pink tubes of meat into a plastic dishpan. They landed with squishy thuds.
Huh, thought Otto. They should be here by now; it’s time to feed the kids. And suiting the action to the word, he shuffled back through the house and to the porch; easing open the door. He squeezed through a teeming mass of plump, frenzied raccoons. They were all clamoring to be fed. Otto waved his hand a little to calm them down, burdened as he was under thirty pounds of fresh weenies.
Otto settled onto the thick bench he’d built years before. The wood creaked under his great weight. Holding the dishpan over his head, he surveyed his hungry friends. They were all screaming to be fed, with little shrill “eeks,” and waving their tiny paws in supplication. At length, Otto smiled winsomely and began doling out the weenies to the raccoons. Each coon in turn–almost thirty of them–grasped the tubes of meat and absconded with them, chewing only when he or she was some distance away from the old man.
It would not be unfair to describe the raccoons as plump. In fact they more resembled furry pigs than large rodents. Their bellies were prodigious, their faces so distended with fat that their whiskers faced forward, rather than to the sides, as a normal beast’s would have. But their appetites never faltered. Otto fed them one weenie at a time, and when he wasn’t fast enough, a raccoon would in his enthusiasm seize one of his fingers–which, curiously, were the same dimensions as the weenies–and try to make off with it.
But Otto, brooking no mischief, would rap the offender sharply across the cranium with a furled knuckle. A little “crack” would echo across the porch and out into the darkness of the night and all the coons would cease chewing and stare at first Otto and then the errant raccoon. After a moment they would resume chewing.
Otto made several trips off the porch and into his kitchen, returning each time with a fresh supply of weenies. At long last, each hungry raccoon having consumed as much as five pounds of pork, their appetites finally began to falter. At which point Otto reached deep into his voluminous parka and extracted a bulging plastic bag. Sticking his thick fingers into the Baggie, he extracted some marijuana and expertly rolled a joint. The raccoons sat back on their haunches and watched him with interest. Finally he fired that doobie up and took a great drag. Still they watched him expectantly, till at length he held out the joint until each raccoon, in turn, had scaled the bench on which he sat, put their little raccoon lips to the joint and taken a toke.
After a short time, all the raccoons were lying prone on the bench, on the floor and on the cement steps of the porch, thoroughly strung out. “Well,” said Otto, attaching his latest roach to a clip, “that’s that.” One of his little friends, lying upon the floor at Otto’s feet, lifted its nose and sniffed inquiringly. “You know what this means, don’t you, Freddy?” he asked his portly raccoon friend. The old man nodded and smiled, the action crinkling his eyes. “That’s right,” he said again, “Time for the Pringles and the M&M’s,” and in anticipation of the inevitable munchies, he shuffled off back into the house in pursuit of treats.
Bill Tope