Rats With Thumbs

 In Sumas, the raccoons stuck strictly to my weird neighbor's place and I was fine with that because the weird neighbors themselves were very raccoon-like (smelly, disease vectors, like to root around in the trash.)  My thought was "Go. Party. Live in a discarded sofa on the side of the road. Be happy."  And they were, until they abandoned the house and it was declared a biohazard and the fire department had to burn it down.

How many of you have been hanging around Steve (or Paul) this long? ^^^

It was so ammoniac and horrible inside this house that the air quality warning sirens the poor firemen were wearing were going off the whole time they were setting up the burn. This, my friends, is why we don't hoard animals.

A fireman at the end of the rainbow!         

Before moving back to Bellingham, I had only seen a live raccoon in daylight four times in my whole freakin' life.  Once here, I began seeing them going past my back slider nearly every day, waddling along in a nonchalant manner.  One night I woke up to clattering only to turn on the light and see two big ol' honkin' raccoons mere inches away on the other side of the glass, standing on their hind legs looking at me like I was the problem.   

 Whenever I see the things I chase them off. And they go. Not leaping away in terror, the way you should when a mighty Apex Predator bids you begone, oh no.  They just amble. Like "OK sugar pie, be that way. We'll let it go." And they were always headed down the same direction. 

Why?

I found out this last May, when it got warm, and it began raining. 

They were going to the wooded space between my building and the next one down, shitting in a heap at the base of a tree. 

The tree right outside my bathroom window. 

What had until then been refrigerated became, that warm, rainy Spring night, a Lovecraftian nightmare-mound of nauseating yellow and orange fungus, semisolids, tall cilia and stench. I opened the bathroom window to clear the steam and DAMN. NO. WHAT THE HELL.

               And that's the story of how I discovered the phenomenon of The Raccoon Latrine!

You didn't need this picture, but you got this picture.    

Apparently raccoons will pick out specific locations to take a dump, and they'll all use that same little exclusive spot to hang ass like the dirty, disgusting little freaks they are. These communal haystacks of crap are called a raccoon latrine  (link provided in case you wanted to look up the crapping habits of raccoons. Who knows with you people.)

 Call me picky, but I feel that a raccoon latrine belongs in the damn woods, not in the middle of a high-end apartment complex.  Raccoons are not cute. They are not funny. They are Rats With Thumbs. 

 Good thing I've been plying our handyman with Bushmills.  He is mine to command.   I was able to get him to set traps tout de suite, and he's been catching the masked bastards right and left since late May. He says he lets them loose down in Skagit.  

I am happy to leave it at that. 

We smile.