Dean's Housesitting Story

by Dean Sharp

Dig this...

I was laying on the couch watching a friend's "Josie and the Pussycats" DVD and not really paying attention to it. Several hours of ice cream and soda tend to make one a tad unfocused and comatose.

So I'm laying there and I realize that it's dark outside (which tends to happen at 11 o'clock at night). Normally this sort of thing never even occurs to me, except for the fact that I have inadvertently left the curtains wide open. Again, nothing particularly fascinating going on at this point, but it slowly dawns on me that the amount of light outside as compared to the amount of light inside creates this sort of fish bowl type of effect. I can't see dick outside and yet if there were to be anyone with a line of sight to the back door then they could pretty much gawk away with me being in oblivion-land. I don't know why they would, but I'm not them.

So I'm laying (lying?) there realizing this when I hear a sound RIGHT OUTSIDE OF THE SCREEN DOOR. Sort of a quick, eerie scraping sound, like a chisel on concrete. Well, let me just tell you that I was about to have absolutely NONE of that! I hop up and race over to the doorway and throw on the light. Naturally there is nothing there. I wait patiently, but nothing happens. I determine that I'm just a victim of the heebie-jeebies and proceed to turn out the outside light and draw the curtains closed.

Not five minutes later, I am flushed out of my coma once again, only this time to the sound of furious scraping (this time the chisel is on wood) that does not let up. Every millisecond that passes sends me into a ten-fold deeper panic. I shoot off of the couch so fast that I slam into the wall next to the patio door. I very dramatically throw the drawn curtains aside and slam on the lights. The sounds continue unabated, but there is nothing to be seen.

It is around this time that I notice that this sound is decidedly farther away than the original concrete scraping. It seems to be coming from... the back fence. Suddenly it all makes sense. There is a madman in the bushes. I turn to go for the phone to call the proper authorities when the furious scraping stops and I hear, NOT SEE, something running in my direction. I try to focus on the ground where I believe the sound is coming from and I see (in my admittedly excited state) a head rolling across the grass at me.

Instant train-wreck mentality sets in. I CANNOT LOOK AWAY FROM IT, BUT OH, DEAR LORD HOW I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THIS!!! I'm about to let out the blood-curdlingest of cries when I notice... that is one freakin' big head! Then I see something curious: the head has a tail. With rings on it. And it has four paws.

"RACOON!!!!!!" Now I didn't mean to scream it quite as loud as it actually came out of me, but there you are. It looked up at me, stopped running and sort of stood there about ten yards away - staring at me.

I proceeded to quietly chide him about hiding in my bushes and pretending to be a homicidal maniac and scaring the pants off of me, when out of the blue a second, WAY HUGE-ER raccoon comes bolting out of the same bush at a thousand miles an hour straight for both of us. Startled me. Pretty much pissed off the smaller raccoon, who had apparently had enough. They proceeded to scream at each other at deafening levels while basically creating their own version of the Tasmanian Devil little tornado thing. They swirl over to the side of the house where I can't see them anymore and proceed to repeatedly hurl themselves violently against the sheet metal tool shed. This, let me just say, was very, very loud. And they actually seemed to enjoy the effect it had on their opponents, as they WOULD NOT STOP.

I decided I had had enough.

I pick up a few rocks and decide to try to shoo them away out into the open where the only weapon they had against each other were themselves (If you look really carefully, you might be able to see where this is leading). As soon as I get barely in their sight, they BOTH stop doing what they were doing and run RIGHT FOR ME! If I had not just peed minutes earlier, I would have then. I froze. I mean HARDCORE FROZE. My life was O-V-E-R. Somehow, my eyes also knew this to be true and didn't want to held responsible for any sort of collateral damage, and slammed themselves shut.

So there I stood, waiting for the first gnaw. I heard them coming right for me. My leg muscles have probably never been as tight as they were right then. I waited. Now I could feel their weight on the ground as they were coming for me. I waited. Then the most curious thing happened:

They passed me.

One on either side of me. I felt BOTH of their tails as they passed each foot. At full stride as they were, if they were coming for me, they absolutely would not only have knocked me down, but most assuredly broken both of my legs. But they didn't. They passed me. So, naturally I wonder to myself, "well then where are they going?" I turn and look and see them both heading STRAIGHT FOR THE OPEN SCREEN DOOR.

Funny enough, the emotion that came over me was of the "you-gotta-be-FREAKING-KIDDING-ME!" variety. I didn't know what to do. So I yelled some gibberish at them (I think my exact words were, "OOWAAYO!!! GONAHOTCHAO!"). While this flurry of syllables was leaving my face, my hand said to my brain, "hey, I still got these rocks. i could throw them in front of the raccoons and stop them going any further". My arm apparently said, "good idea". And as I flung the handful of rocks, a final "NUNG!!" escaped from me.

Well, my arm heaved, my hand opened, and the rocks flew. In a direction nowhere near the raccoons or the doorway. But it worked. Not five feet from tearing the house to shreds, they stopped. They both gave me the strangest look, like "Dude, whatever," and just sort of walked away. Together. As in, no-longer-fighting.

I probably won't get much sleep tonight.