Raccoon Ignition (Remix)

It's the remix to Ignition, hot and fresh out the kitchen.... Something something something. Isn't it odd to think that R Kelly is real? Living. Breathing. Rapping. Learning something new about midgets every single day.

Here's something else that's both odd and real: the raccoon. In the glorious Canadian cartoon of the same name, raccoons rode bicycles, wore monogrammed sweatshirts and even owned dogs. They had pleasant picnics in the woods and only occasionally fell out with their neighbour Cyril Sneer (who was an aardvark, according to google - not a shaved bear, as I had suspected). Until last week, I had never had reason to stop and think about real raccoons; not in any meaningful sense. "Oh, that bin has been tipped over," Heather would say. "Must be the raccoons." Cue my daydreaming of Bert, Ralph and Melissa playing tennis or scrumping apples or something.

L-R: Scarf, ganzie, crop top

But raccoons are real, man. Really real. How do I know? Because we had a close encounter with one; an episode so dramatic it warranted its own 999-style commentary by Michael Burke. Allow me to set the scene: David and Heather are on the balcony to measure for patio furniture. David crouches down, tape measure in hand, and he notices a tell-tale sign in the corner of his eye...

POO. In fact, TWO POOS. Big ones. Comfortably bigger than a cat's. A frown creeps across my befuddled face. "Heather," I manage to emit, "one of our neighbours has been throwing dog shit up here." Tony says little, but I can tell that she immediately suspects the two dog-owning smokers across the way. Their house is up for sale and she's already decided what she thinks of it: not as nice as ours. Which makes them bad people.

Before we can speculate any further ("Turkey vultures?") there is a rustling; a growing sense of dread; a noise from a corner that ought to be silent. The barbecue is alive, breathing, sneaking.

We stand still and slowly turn our heads in the direction of the disturbance. A bandit's face slowly, very slowly, emerges from the canvas barbecue cover. I do what real men do: hazard a wild guess as to what it is and what it wants. "Heather... IT'S A FOX!" I cry, momentarily forgetting that foxes are physically unable to scale the sides of buildings and drop onto balconies. The face's creepy, sinewy, human-like hands slide into view and the game is up: it's a raccoon, and we're facing certain death.

Our stares meet - its evil shrimp eyes and my nice blue ones - and its expression speaks a thousands words, a thousand sentiments, but mostly this: "I shat on your balcony and slept in your barbecue. And now I'm leaving." With that, the Bastard of the Woods (TM David Welsh) slunk over the neighbour's wall, presumably to curl out a Cleveland Steamer on her spotless Muskoka chairs.

Dirty Bertie

Fast-forward 10 days: we've just about recovered from our ordeal, and Tony - at long bloody last - has bothered herself to pick up the poo using a plastic bag as a glove. Judging from her face as she was doing it, I made the right decision to delegate that particular task. But there's a sting in the tail as we notice a gassy smell outside. Not a big deal, we think; not after our indoor gas leak last month (another story entirely). It transpires that the raccoon didn't just relieve his bowels on our woodwork and snooze where we prepare food: it also took it upon itself to release the gas valve and turn one of the burner controls. The upshot is a gas leak we knew nothing about for the best part of a fortnight.

That absolute BASTARD had better watch himself when our gas bill arrives.