I am walking home from work when I see a strange movement near the curb. It is raining; it's been raining for most of the day. As I come closer I realize it's a paw, jutting up from under the cover of the storm drain. Then there's a second paw, equally scrabbly and frantic. The wheels in my brain are turning slowly: too big to be a squirrel, please God not a humongous rat, this must be a...could it be a possum, in the daytime?
Whatever it is, its paws are thoroughly bedraggled and there's a panicky quality to its movements. I feel that I ought to check it out. I circle around the drain, giving it a wide berth. I have zero desire to get into a turf war with a possum crazy enough to be out in broad daylight. Suddenly a face is clearly visible, also thoroughly bedraggled. Its expression is not what you'd call friendly.
It's a raccoon. It seems to have become trapped under the storm drain cover, somehow. I am mystified. What could make a raccoon wedge itself under the storm drain cover and then change its mind in the middle? I am also disinclined to provide direct assistance, because this particular raccoon looks like it could use some comfort food. Like, say, a chunk of human calf, gouged out of the leg of the foolhardy person who comes within snapping distance.*
The storm drain is in front of my next door neighbor's house, so I go inside and call the town's storm drain maintenance folks. They tell me to call animal control. (While I am on hold I am watching out of the window. I am half expecting the raccoon to come tearing wild-eyed up the sidewalk, dragging the storm drain cover on its neck.) The animal control guy comes back on the line. He says, well, you can call natural resources if you want, but they're probably going to tell you the same thing. Raccoons live in the storm sewers. That one probably just found the water a little too fast-moving down there after all the rain we've had today, and so it was clinging to the underside of the drain cover to catch its breath. No need to intervene.
Raccoons live in the storm sewers?
And cling to the undersides of drain covers to catch their breath when it rains heavily?
If I had not seen this actual raccoon clinging to the underside of the actual drain cover, I would have thought this guy was pulling my leg. Live and learn, and maybe steer clear of storm drains when the rains are heavy.
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*PS This doesn't have anything to do with the rest of this post, except that writing the word calf made me think of the word femur. On Easter our priest was talking about the Pharisees and Jesus. I could have sworn he said, "They thought he was a blest femur!" I began rootling through my mental lexicon. A blest femur? Excuse me? Did femur have some secret meaning I'd never discovered? Most of the way through the homily it dawned on me: blasphemer. Of course.
PPS It occurs to me that this is not the first time I've missed a chunk of Mass trying to puzzle out a semantic mystery. Perhaps I should work on that.
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