The raccoon

So where were we, before the proverbial fan was hit?

Ah, yes.

I believe I was telling you a story about a raccoon.

It's a story a friend told me some years ago, about something that happened at her friend's house.

So, if you're following closely, this happened to the raccoon of a friend of a friend.

So it must be true.

Anyway...

This friend of a friend, she had a raccoon in her yard, so she called the police. (Let's assume the raccoon was rabid, or perhaps trying to steal her bicycle.)

When the officer came, the raccoon (who was apparently walking very slow or perhaps having trouble with the Kryptonite U-lock) was still there, and the officer decided the best way to handle the situation was to shoot him.

Again, we'll need to make some assumptions, namely that the officer in question was new to the police force, and perhaps not familiar with all the paperwork involved when discharging a weapon within 100 feet of a domicile, or perhaps, that this raccoon lived in Montana and there were no domiciles with which to be concerned. I don't really know.

In any case, the owner of the home was horrified because it took several bullets before the raccoon succumbed, and her son witnessed the entire episode. I guess it takes a lot for those Montana people to bring their kids inside. Me, we'd-a never been out there in the first place, what with all the darned ticks, but if we were, the second that raccoon started trying to steal my bicycle, we'd-a come right inside. I say, just take the darn bicycle, you can always replace a bicycle.

Anyway, my friend's point was more about the raccoon itself.

"Do you know why it took so many shots?" she asked me.

In relation to its size, there is actually so little going on in a raccoon's body by way of important organs, she explained, that it is very hard to hit anything in there significant enough to kill it. (If I happen to have any raccoon biologists among my readership, please don't bother writing in with contradictory statements. Now is not the time to have facts blurring my story.)

This lack of stuff going on in a raccoon fascinated my friend. Mostly because she had hit upon a brilliant model for explaining the emotional (and on some days, intellectual) content of the human male.

There is so little going on in there, she extrapolated, that it takes a lot of repetition for them to actually get what you're saying.

I'd giggle over this story every so often - and even repeat it to other friends, in the way frustrated stay-at-home moms often do, as a means of coping.

But I didn't actually think it was true.

Until this weekend, as I watched the two males in my life, ages 7 and 45, whiling away an afternoon in a hammock, blowing ginormous soda burps into each other's faces, and laughing hysterically.

"Girl," I said, turning to my daughter, who looked on at the scene in horror. "Let me tell you a story. It's about a raccoon..."

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There's no burping allowed over at humor-blogs.