raccoon love

Let me share with you the absolutely exquisite sound that woke me from a deep, lovely sleep long before the buttcrack of dawn.

I startled at the noise, because it sounded like it was coming from under my bed. Initially I thought it was a dying cat- god help me- but when I opened the door to my bedroom, I saw both my big white toms, Jem and Scout, sitting there, staring at me, looking rather concerned. Apparently the noise woke them up, too.

As I listened, though, I realized it sounded less like a feline and more like a. . . like a. . .like a giant hamster in a fight with one of those aliens from the movie "Signs," you know, with the clicking and the whirring noises. So yes, a giant hamster vs an alien, under my house. At 0230. And then- oh yes, my friends, this story gets better- the pipes started rattling, and various detritus that collects in the crawl space beneath any old house started flying around down there as the hamster/alien thing rolled crazily around, nattering and clicking and yowling away. I could hear the dog in the apartment upstairs pacing, the noise was so worrisome.

If I were brave, and it were less cold outside, and a little more light, I might have stuck a hose under the house and turned it on full jet. But it was very cold, and very dark, and I was not feeling very brave at all, and did not feel prepared to deal with anything that might come screeching out at me. So I stomped up and down on the floor, and then got down on my hands and knees right next to the crawlspace trap door in my closet, and shouted in my meanest, angriest voice, "knock it off!" which had no effect whatsoever on the giant alien hamster still crashing into pipes and such, but which caused the cats great consternation.

So I got back into bed and lay there with a pillow around my ears until the giant clicky shrieky hamster thingie made its way outside, and I peeked out the door and saw what appeared to be a large, fuzzy ball that could very well have been the alien hamster I'd imagined in my head that eventually stopped making noise and turned into two raccoon butts sauntering away from me.

Raccoons mating. If you've never been blessed with the sound, consider yourself very, very lucky. I'm going to have nightmares for days.