Thursday, 20 November 2008

mutual of ohama's wild kingdom I am not

Snort. Like we didn't know that.

I drive home over a Bailey Bridge every night.
Coming home tonight after Parent-Teacher Conferences, tapping my toes to the beat, thinking idly about the fact that it's 0 degrees (Celsius, people!) and that means the next thing I need to do is break out the snowpants, and I was to the middle of the bridge before it registered that I wasn't the only thing using the bridge to cross the river at that moment.

There was a cat running down the support beam ahead of me. A big, fat, rotund gray cat. Huh. What's that doing out here? Somebody's pet, out in the cold and wet and it's starting to snow, isn't it? Maybe I can get it to come to me and see if it has a tag. It's obviously not starving. Looks like a circle with a tail, actually. A big, long bushy black and gray striped tail... Huh. And it's stopping to look at me! It has a mask like Lucy! Wait until I tell....wait a minute!

I cut my speed to a crawl and followed the raccoon as it waddled over the bridge, speeding up only when it disappeared over the verge.

11 comments:

MARY G said...

Yeah. That happened to me once. A black cat. With a white stripe down the middle of its back .......
..... cripes! The wretched animal strolled, slowly, along the middle of the road and I crept along after it at 1K per hour until it deigned to walk off.
Darn, you write well! I could see that raccoon.

Woman in a Window said...

I love your small vignettes that you write. Your words are strong and descriptive. They pull me right in. And even with a story of a fat raccoon I leave with the feeling of "lovely".

(And I wrote about bears today. What's up with that?)

Anonymous said...

Awesome! I love raccoons. And I agree with the other comments. I could see it just as you wrote it.

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

A fat raccoon? Life must be bountiful over there.

Anonymous said...

Pete mistook a skunk for a cat once. Luckily, he realized his error in time.

alison said...

Our neighbourhood is home to a gang of fat raccoons. Or at least it was back in August. There were 4 of them that hung out together and they were very fat. I think they were living in my neighbour's cedar hedge. I was very glad that I kept my garbage cans inside the garage.

Unknown said...

Too funny! But that bridge is so cool!!!

You might want to read my post for today: http://mapsgirl.blogspot.com/2008/11/isnt-it-pretty.html

meggie said...

I have never, & probably will never, seen/see a raccoon. Not the time to see one really huh?

Shauna said...

I am new here! What a great blog :)

crazymumma said...

Hey , there are SOME cats that look like big ole coons....

Loth said...

Well, that's one thing that is unlikely to happen to me here in Edinburgh!

Whole lot of nothing going on

Last week, I got covid. For the third time, and this one was unpleasant in ways that I don't really want to talk about. (Life tip: NO ...