Gary’s Father’s Day Gift From His Babies

Gary announced his intent to make turkey soup, and I announced my intent to document his turkey-soup-making process, which involves sauteeing all the vegetables separately before putting them in the soup, and then he elected to make his soup after I went to bed.

That’s why he was up making soup after midnight. It was officially Father’s Day when he woke me up at three a.m. I had to be up at three anyway to run a test for work, but still I could see there was something extra he wanted to tell me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“The baby raccoons attacked me,” he said, and chortled.

He said:

I was waiting while the onions cooked down in the butter, and I sat back down to read my iPad at the table by the french door. The house was filled with a delicious smell of onions, and maybe some of it wafted outside. I glanced outside and saw two little heads pop up in unison by the food dish. They made eye contact with me, and then suddenly they set off running full tilt at the house!

I thought they’d stop when they got to the patio, but they flew over the patio, leapt up on the stoop, and launched into the french doors at full speed. Then they tried to break through the door! They pounded their little paws on the glass and scrabbled as hard as they could, all the while making this crazed growling sound.

I was aghast. I was worried the glass wouldn’t hold. They had these big eyes that said, “I WANT TO TEAR YOUR HOUSE DOWN.”

I did not scream like a woman. Instead, I started to get up, just to see how close I could get to the door before they ran away —

I stopped him in this obvious lie. “You mean, you went to open the door, and then make them a plate of sauteed onions piled into a cone shape, and then pet them and dress them up until they infected you with rabies?”

No,he said, he didn’t get a chance to even consider it, because Momma Raccoon twitched her tail and the kits “froze, then vanished like Zorro into the night.”