| Conversations with Raccoons | 2003-06-18 13:46:29 ET |
Last night, a bunch of thumping on my roof was keeping me awake.
I looked out my bedroom window (the roof comes down, and there's a ledge under my window that leads to the porch roof), and there was a raccoon thumping along looking for a way down.
Poor little bugger had climbed up, then got stuck.
It's happened before. That time, my dad had to go outside, and find a board long enough to lean up against the porch roof so the raccoon could climb down.
So I sat watching it going back and forth in front of my window, and leaning off the roof to look for something to grab onto so it could climb down.
The chubby little thing even tested out the telephone and electric wires connected to our house from the telephone pole across the street.
Luckily it realized that the wires wouldn't hold it and gave up on that idea.
While it was on it's way back up toward the ledge under my window, I tapped on the window.
It stopped, stood up, put it's paws on the screen and looked in at me. I wiggled my fingers at it, and touched the window, it shifted it's paw on the screen to where my finger was (I guess, not realizing that there was a piece of glass between it and me).
I looked at it and said (because I'm weird like that ...) "Either climb down the same way you came up, or go over there and try the holly tree. You're making too much noise and it's keeping me awake."
So what did it do? It went over to the edge of the roof where the holly tree is (where it hadn't tried going while I was watching it), then I heard some rustling in the tree, and eventually, some rustling down in the front yard.
Sometimes, I swear, animals can understand what you're saying.
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