A Rocky Relationship

The suburbs have their share of wildlife – squirrels, birds, possums, Airbnb party animals. My wife Sherry and I had even gotten use to the iguana invasion that hit our South Florida neighborhood hard the past several years. But when a raccoon showed up in our backyard recently, we recoiled in horror.

It wasn’t that raccoons were menacing or frightening or even particularly unsightly. It was just that 2020 had already thrown a global pandemic, social isolation and deep-seeded fears of an unpredictable future at us. The sudden appearance of a masked mammal didn’t feel like a good omen.

Two doors down, our friends Toby and Terry were even more on edge. The raccoon, which was quickly nicknamed Rocky, had taken a liking to their tropical backyard pool area and would appear at random moments with the demeanor of a guest wondering what was for dinner that day. Overnight, Toby and Terry’s outdoor lifestyle of swimming, grilling poolside, and laidback lounging was replaced by the paranoia and angst common among troops under siege.

“When I’m outside, I’m always strategic about what door I’m closest to if I have to take evasive action,” Terry told me.

“Does it ever come at you?” I asked, digging for details that might benefit me during close encounters of the raccoon kind.

“No, but it doesn’t retreat either,” he observed, painting a picture of a calculating, fearless adversary.

Sure enough, the next day while picking up a fallen palm frond in my backyard I came face to face with the serenely unruffled Rocky. He was no more than 30 feet away and in no hurry to increase the distance between us.

I made an exaggerated stomping move in his direction, thinking it would spook him to run for safety.  He just stared at me quizzically as if to say “Is there something wrong with your leg?”

When my bloodcurdling yelping sound also failed to budge him, I decided to lose the battle and head inside to focus on winning the war.

Toby and Terry were way ahead of us.

“We’ve hired a trapper,” Toby told Sherry. “He’ll put cages in our yard, your yard and Barbara’s.

“Is Barbara on board?” Sherry asked, knowing that our good friend and long-time neighbor has a pro animal policy of “feed it first, ask questions later.”

“She’s okay with it as long as they catch and release it unharmed into the wild,” Toby confirmed.

There was talk that Barbara also wanted the raccoon’s email address to keep in touch, but she backed off for the sake of expediency.

On the morning after the trapper set up his holding cells I awoke early to find a reluctant tenant in the cage at the north end of our backyard.

“We got a raccoon,” I called to Sherry, “but it’s smaller than Rocky and has different markings.”

As I adjusted my eyes in the pre-dawn shadows, I realized the idea that it was even a raccoon at all was sketchy.

“It’s a possum,” Sherry announced a few minutes later as the backyard sunlight made species identification more of an exact science.

After touching base with Toby, Terry and Barbara, the trapper was summoned, the possum relocated, and the cages refilled with food for another night of raccoon seduction.

“Do you really think Rocky is going to fall for this?” I asked Terry. On day one, he had seen the raccoon sniffing around the cage in his yard and then walking away as though too smart to take the risk.

“I don’t know, but I’d like to give it another shot,” he shrugged, his tone at odds with his hopes.

The next morning, much to my disbelieving eyes, it happened. There he was, caught, caged and collected. “ROCKY CAPTURED!” screamed the boldfaced headline in my brain. We alerted our partners in raccoon reconnaissance and summoned the trapper to carry out extradition to more suitable territory.

After weeks of wariness and tension, our long national nightmare was over.  Well, not our national nightmare, but certainly our neighborhood nightmare.

Terry and Toby are finally enjoying their backyard paradise. Sherry and I have stopped worrying about what surprises lurk in the branches of our mango tree. And Barbara, well, word has it she got Rocky’s contact info and is keeping him in the loop on neighborhood news.

I’ve asked her to update him on a new strain of raccoon-eating iguanas that some claim to have spotted here. Hey, it might just be a rumor, Rock, but why take a chance?