Tag: Raccoons

Fenwick Dines

I mentioned in Smart Critters, Each and Every One both male and female Raccoons are glorifying us with their presence.

To prove my point, behold Fenwick, a might male raccoon.

A rather direct and focused eater, Fenwick doesn’t entertain small talk. He prefers Two-Legs get to the point ASAP.

Said point being, “Here’s your peanuts, Fenwick.”

I like that about The Wild.

Not a lot of putzin’ around. Let’s do it, get things done, there’ll be time for chatting later.

Yeah, right, most of them take off after they’ve filled their bellies.

How male, huh?

 

Smart Critters, Each and Every One

Ah, Glorious Raccoons.

(you have to include that “Glorious” part or they get cranky)

Tonight we entertain several of these furry beasties, at this point recently awoken from their winter slumbers.

I’ve noted previously that Raccoons don’t truly hibernate so much as go dormant.

So perhaps, more correctly, “…recently awoken from their winter dormancy.”?

In any case, several Raccoons deigned to join us on this fine, crisp, slightly past mid-winter’s eve.

Thank Hrycuna (the Raccoons‘ diety. Also their language) we regularly stock up on peanuts, dog food (they prefer the bacon flavor to the chicken flavor), and cookies (we haven’t found their faves, peanut cookies, in several years. If you know where we can find them, do tell.
Better yet, send us a box. Oh, come on, at least one or two packs. We’ll take it from there).

It is too early in the season for their kits to be about. It’s doubtful the females have kitted at this time. Far too early in the season.

Another indication is that both male and female gather together (“…to ask…Hrycuna’s blessing…”) at the baskets. Mothers near term and those with kits will challenge males and force them elsewhere.

Reminds one of Virginia Graham‘s Girl Talk…

 
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Busy Days in Raccoon Town

We are known by the Old Ones.

In our backyard, they gather for their feasts.

Being known by the ancients can be wonderful.

And wonderfully terrifying.

As I noted in The Shaman

CHAPTER 123 – THE FROG
I drive back from the Y, late Fall, late morning, and come around a curve as a frog hops into the road.
I swerve, drive on, complete the curve, pull over, stop.
The frog continues its journey into the road.
Others will not care if this one completes its journey or not. Some might see its movements against the wet tar of the road.
Two cars come around the curve in my rearview mirror.
I get out of my car, trot back up the road, find the frog dead, crushed and flattened, three-quarters of the way across.
I grieve. I should have acted sooner. I know what is important and what is not.
I cry, ask Frog’s forgiveness for not taking care of its shadow.
Sunlight comes over the hillock blinding the curve, shines on the grasses opposite me, steaming where the frog might have been.
A mist rises.
Shapes.
Coming forward.
Old Ones.
The First Ones.
The Ancients.
The True Ones of which all else is Shadow and Myth, a harmony of human and animal energies so I can understand.
A’blig’moodj, The Frog Prince, the one of whom one of my teachers is a shadow, walks forward, holds its hand up to me.
Behind him, beside him, Wolf, Bear, Stag, Eagle, Lion, Hawk, Moose, Whale, Dolphin, Salmon, Oak, Ash, Thorn, and more lost further back in the mist.
A Council of All Beings.
A Council of All First Ones.
A’blig’moodj’s mist forms around me. It takes my hand. I hear it inside me. “Do not grieve, Gio. This one was old and could not survive another winter. It is good he comes Home now.”
I fall to the pavement, shaking, terrified. To be in the presence of such energies. My bodies can not stand.
A’blig’moodj lifts me, holds me, stands me beside him. “You are known to us, and we thank you.”
It returns to The Ancients.
I crawl to my car, unable to drive, barely able to breathe.
To be known by The Ancients.
And live.

 

Big Family Dinners

Do you and yours often attend family get-togethers?

My paternal grandmother’s kitchen was such a place.

Between my father’s siblings and their various children, the smaller than average kitchen sported thirty-three individuals, ages from a few weeks old to mid-seventies.

And when my grandparents had their siblings over?

Oy!

Because they would bring their children’s children and children’s children’s children.

Such gatherings of the clans most often occurred late Spring through early Fall.

Then cars and pickups would line the street.

Thank goodness the only people who lived on the street were my relatives.

Sometimes and not often, family rivalries would surface.

As a child, these fascinated me.

As an adult, they fascinate me.

Except now there’s not enough people left in my family for such to occur.

I reach out to my cousins, rarely get a response.

My life followed a different path than theirs.

Doesn’t leave much to talk about as we have little in common.

Except gatherings around my grandmother’s kitchen table.

 

Hecate and The First, Second, Third, Fourth, and possibly Fifth Edition

We thank you for your patience.

I feel I should precede that with something like “All our customer support personnel are busy helping other callers now…”

I’d be much happier if the statement was something like “All our underpaid, overworked, undertrained, foreign-based staff who are concurrently making dinner, changing diapers, or doing something much more important to their survival are confusing and confounding the bejesus out of other increasingly enraged customers…”

But you, dear reader, were patient with me with last week’s Raccoon Butts, and I thank you.