Raccoon Paradise

•August 21, 2024•

by Janet Roney

My dear step-mother, Mabel Shuman, declared war on raccoons one dark night in late 1957.  When she heard a ruckus in the chicken house, she grabbed a broomstick, and went out into the winter night to check on it. (Mabel was eight months pregnant, I was asleep, and Dad was gone.)  

At the chicken House, a dark form ran out into the chicken yard and climbed a little plum tree. Breathless, with her dim flashlight wasting on the ground, she swatted away at the dark shape with ringed tail until it fell lifeless to the ground. Her fang-marked broomstick was a trophy of her victory. Getting rid of the chickens and chicken feed did not rid her of raccoons, for they liked her cat food, too. Having tired of broomstick combat, she set a live animal trap next to her cat food bowl. Through the years, several snarling, thrashing, hissing bandits were hauled across the river where they were released alive (still snarling, hissing, and thrashing) into the great outdoors…whereupon (she was certain) they swam back across the river and hightailed it right back to her cat food bowl again.

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