Raccoon

So somebody's been stealing the fruit from the strawberry plants on my deck. It looks like a clean professional job. No crumbs lying around. My wife says it could be the squirrels who've have been loitering around in a suspicious manner lately but my money is on the asshole grackle. He's a shady character.

The grackle has devised a great workaround for getting to the contents of the bird-feeder for those times when I'm on the deck. This is what he does. When I'm not around, he violently waggles the feeder back and forth, causing all the birdseed to fall on the ground where he can later browse it at his own leisure. What the grackle doesn't realize or is callously insensitive to is the fact that through his actions, he is spoiling the dining experience for the rest of my patron base. If you're a bird and planning to go out for a nice romantic dinner with your lady friend where you'll be popping her the ultimate question, whose establishment are you gonna visit, the guy who keeps a full feeder or the one who forces you to eat off the ground? The answer is obvious. Each day the grackle finds new ways of getting under my skin. Wars have been waged due to far less provocation. The sad part is, I am sure the grackle would be a much more productive member of society, were he to apply his powers of deductive reasoning to its betterment rather than its downfall. But he chooses to follow the dark side and that is a pity.

A raccoon now trespasses on to my deck every night. He climbs up using a ladder that one of his raccoon buddies or perhaps a mercenary deer has got to be holding down for him because unless he was bitten by a radioactive spider during his stint at the Daily Bugle, there's no way a raccoon would be able to climb up the ten foot post, crawl upside down on the underside of the deck, then make his way up the railing and onto my flowerpots. I have asked around for advice on how to keep him away. An American colleague suggested that I use a BB gun on him. I asked him, what's a BB gun, is it the one that shoots water and is popular among Holi revelers who lack access to a faucet for balloon-filling purposes? He asked me, what is Holi? I replied, it is a Hindu festival celebrating the fortuitous escape of young Prahlad from an assassination attempt by the demoness Holika who carried him into a raging fire on behalf of her brother, the demon Hiranyakashipu. I see, said the colleague, who's this Prahlad, is he an ex-President of India or something? Well no, I replied, India being a parliamentary democracy, the president of India is a mere figurehead. For his escape from a demon attack to be met with such rambunctious delight, it would have to be at least the prime-minister, who happens to be the working head of the executive branch. All in all, it was a highly productive discussion.

Since my colleague turned out to be useless, I turned to my next-door neighbor for help. She informed me that another home-owner up the street also currently had a raccoon visiting him. I said, "Really, does he have any idea why it's doing that"? She replied that apparently it was after the bird seed in his feeder.

"Goddamn you GRACKLEEEEEE", I yelled, raising my face up to the heavens. "The grackle keeps spilling my birdseed onto the lawn", I translated for her, "which must be what attracted the raccoon to my deck in the first place". "Here's what you do", she replied, "Add hot pepper flakes to your birdseed, that should keep the raccoon away".

So that's what I'm gonna do now. Hopefully the raccoon doesn't have any Indian ancestry in his blood. If he does, I'm gonna have to use plan B which involves playing heavy metal music loudly at all times. It might cost me friends and family but every war has its sacrifices.