Last week we noticed a very plump raccoon, slowly waddling across our street in the middle of the morning in broad daylight! We were astonished. All of us had thought raccoons only came out in the dark of night to root in trash and terrorize neighbourhood cats while looking so darn cute. We passed it off to just an odd occurance and went on our merry little lives.
A couple of days later, Erik was in his office, hard at work, I was vaccuming in the living room, and as it had been an unusually warm fall day the frech doors were open. Suddenly, I am frightened half out of my wits, by Erik, appearing at my side out of nowhere and hollering my name above the roar of our bargain vaccum cleaner. It appears Sasha had been frolicking in the backyard and heard a noise. She starting barking her little tiny barks, and Erik came out to investigate. She was standing by the fence, yipping her little head off in excitement. As Erik glanced around to see what could possible be causing this enthusiastic barking, he saw one little furry hand reach up to the top of the fence and then another furry hand appeared as well. Then a furry raccoon head emerged and stared right at him. The sight of a furry raccoon popping up on our fence excited Sasha even further and the barking intinsified. As she barked, the head pointed down to look at her. Erik hollered for me, hoping the plump coon was not going to go after our 8 lb doggie to plump himself even further. He asked the coon what it was doing, however, the coon snubbed him and didn't respond. He merely held on till his little hands started to shake from the effort of holding up his gargantuan body and he could hold on no more and simply fell to the ground.
I ran to the deck to get a look, alas, he was gone. But, wait! Suddenly there he was, in the middle of the day, sauntering across the neighbours yard. We hollered and pointed and looked. He heard us and stopped and came closer to get a view of us wierd humans, then wandered into a bunch of trees.
We thought he must be rabid, or have distemper, he was not afraid of us at all. We decided to call the department of fish and wildlife and report him. We named him Chubby Charlie.
A couple days passed, then, as Erik pulled into the driveway after a late night store run he saw him! Chubby Charlie was in our front yard by our gate. Erik spoke to him and Charlie waddled to our 6 ft gate, climbed to the top, hiosted his front end over and got stuck. He was too fat, his back legs simply dangled there, bicycling furiously for several minutes until he found the momentum to hurl himself over, landing with a loud plop on the other side. That night, while walking back from his office Erik saw some movement in the dark. he shined his flashlight and low and behold, Chubby Charlie was a foot away from him in the grass. Erik asked him where he was going, and Chubby Charlie sat and looked at him and scrached his belly. Then, off he waddled into the night. Hoisting, dangling, bicycling furiously, and plopping over the neighbours fence into the gravel below. Poor Charlie! This was getting quite interresting!
The next day Erik called me while he was out. He had recieved a call from the dept of fish and wildlife. They asked him some questions about Chubby Charlie and said.... Oh yeah! That's Norman!! He lives here, on our block in our neighbourhood, he has been living here for 3 years! They said, every few months they recieve a call about him, and he has never hurt anyones pets and is not afraid of people. He has made such a name for himself the dept of fish and wildlife named him! He doesn't have rabies or distemper, and people feed him, hence his non toned physique. So, mystery solved, life goes on, with a little more love for Norman. I will try to snap a picture of him for your viewing pleasure.
