Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Friday, September 29, 2006 Little Drummer Boy Last spring, when we were down in Iowa visiting Trash's mom, I brought M. Small up to the locally-owned music store a few blocks from her house. I figured he might enjoy looking at the guitars. He likes looking at cars, after all. If one kind of shiny, curvy, brightly colored shape with metallic hardware attracts his interest, why wouldn't another? And even if he didn't like looking at guitars, I do. When we got inside, he looked at the rows of guitars hanging on the wall with what I can only call polite interest. "Pwee," he admitted reluctantly, his word at the time for "pretty." He did smile when I strummed a few chords for him on a bright blue acoustic, his favorite color. But the Marshall stacks in the back pumping out Stevie Ray Vaughan music were just about the only thing in the store capable of drumming up a significant guitar-related interest in him. Did I say "drumming up?" I did, didn't I? Which is odd, because the one thing he was fascinated by was the drum kits. He went up to one of them and started patting his bare palm on the snare. I'm pretty sure he would have done that all day if I'd let him. Maybe even long enough to find a beat. When we got back to the house, I told Trash, "Well, your son's a drummer." Neither of us thought any more about it for a while. Then we went to a Fourth of July parade, where the drum corps were even more fascinating to him than the horses. Then he caught the climactic scene of Drumline one day on cable, and was more riveted to it than he ever has been to a Dora the Explorer video. Then he saw all the drums at the Minnesota State Fair parade, and while he was sitting on my shoulders he got so excited that he very nearly pinched my head clean off. Then he found his toy drum again, and it became the only thing he would allow me to strap to him without protest (including his car seat). Last weekend, I finally took him to Guitar Center to buy him his first set of sticks. That wasn't the only reason, mind you. I was also getting guitar hangers, because after the remodel I'm finally going to have enough wall space to install some. But I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't more excited about the drumsticks. And I'm pretty sure he was too. I know nothing about shopping for drumsticks, and I figured the hardcore guys behind the drum counter would laugh at me if I told them I wanted to buy a pair that would be longer than the legs of the person using them, so I just picked out what looked like the lightest pair. Then I carried M. Small over to the nearest drum kit, sat down on the stool with him on my lap, and handed him the sticks without taking off the cardboard sleeve that holds them together. He tapped lightly and hesitantly on the snare a few times. Then I turned so he could tap on the floor tom. Which he did. Then he started hitting the floor tom harder. I turned him back to the snare, where he began making gunshot noises. So, enough with the drum kit. Still, he was excited. He had his sticks out of the sleeve before the sales guy found my guitar hangers, and was drumming on my head while I paid. In the car, he rapped incessantly on the crossbar of his car seat and announced to me, over and over, "I drummed." We're really not trying to be stage-parenty about this. Just the opposite. He's not even two yet, and I'm sure there's nothing abnormal or even all that special about his wanting to hit things with wooden sticks at this age. And of all his toys, his new drumsticks are barely his favorite. We're really not pushing anything, I promise. But don't tell Trash. If I can get a drum kit out of this, it's totally worth it. posted by M. Giant 8:54 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Have you read The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass? Probably not, since I don't think anyone outside either Germany or my terrible German studies college class has ever looked at it, but it's about this kid who is given a drum set at three and does nothing but drum to communicate and decides to stop growing and then starts screaming so high-pitched that he breaks glass. Essentially, it's a cautionary tale about giving a drum to a toddler.
By I would totally run with this- because I'm amazed at the natural rhythm of many little kids. Rock parent away sir! If you play the guitar when he drums you might be amazed at the cohesiveness of his playing. Well maybe more when he's 3...
By
One word:
By Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Fanatic People go to church for different things, for different reasons. It's not my place to assume why anybody's there. I have no idea what's going on with somebody else's spiritual journey, and it would be presumptuous if not borderline sacrilegious to think I did. Except M. Small. He's there for the fan. He's had a thing for fans almost as long as he's been around. Ceiling fans were just about the first thing that could reliably hold his attention for more than a few seconds, and his obsession only grew from there. To the point where for a while, I was sure his first word was going to be "Saigon.." And his fascination has gotten more intense instead of less. He won't lie still for a diaper change unless the ceiling fan in his room is going, and forget about getting him to sleep. When we're in stores, we have to rush through the aisles where the fans aren't spinning, while we can linger in the ones where they are. But getting back to church. Some people go to experience the presence of God. M. Small is one of those people. For him, however, God is the five-foot monster on a high ledge at the back of the sanctuary. "Big Fan," he'll say to it. "BIG Fan!" Which is why we're glad our church has a day care we can drop him off at. We all commune with the almighty in our own way, but his energetic, Pentecostal style doesn't really fit in with a bunch of lefty Episcopalians. Of course, if you're truly religious, it's not something you confine to Sundays. That's probably why any time we drive past our church, any day of the week, he'll holler from his car seat, "Big Fan!" Just warming up the vocal chords in case he gets an audience, I suppose. This week, however, his fantheism reached a new level, along with his sudden ability to speak in complete sentences. The next-door neighbors currently have a box fan in the second-floor window that faces our house. So M. Small can stand at the living-room window and cry out his mantra, "I see a fan!" Which he does. "Look at that!" He waits breathlessly for those moments when a gust of wind will set it gently turning, at which point he'll mimic the motion by moving his fist in clockwise circles and proclaim, "Spinning!" Like it was making the blind to see and the lame to walk. After a while of this, we actually called next door and asked them to turn it on. This was almost too much for him, and he almost seemed worried that he'd angered it somehow. But the next day is when it got really weird. While we were out apple picking, his new friend The Captain gave him a few sweet buns in a Styrofoam takeout box. After we got home, he paid tribute to the fan in his usual way. And then he went and found the buns, which we thought he was going to eat. But instead he reverently carried them into the living room with both hands, set them on our windowsill, and intoned, "Here, Fan. For you, Fan." He was making an offering. I knew little kids could get confused about religion, but I had no idea. So I don't know what to do. I could force him to go cold turkey, or I could edit together a DVD for him out of the best clips from Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, and Casablanca. But what I'll probably do is wait for him to figure out that when people are praying in church, it's to something other than what he is. After that, he can make his own decisions. posted by M. Giant 9:13 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:And Angel heart - don't forget Angel Heart.
By Fantheism - hah!
By You'll be glad he's been so observant on the day of judgment, when the Big Fan comes for ALL OUR SOULS.
By My little guy had a similar obsession with vacuum cleaners -- he would talk to them (even through the closet door), offer them treats, make up stories about them -- until overnight, a year ago, he decided they were terrifying instead of fascinating. Now he won't enter a room with one in sight. Come to think of it, this describes my relationship with Catholicism over the last 20 years, so I guess it is a natural process.
By Little human beings are so awesome. It's a shame they eventually turn into those annoying giant human beings.
By
So funny!
By I popped over here from a link on fricknits.typepad.com, and I'm glad I did. I am now officially a Big Fan (of your blog). Perhaps M. Small can bring me some treats now?
By Saturday, September 23, 2006 Squarents The other day, I decided to take M. Small to the park before lunch, just like any number of other Saturday mornings. But the park looked different today. The adjoining field had been taken over by several large tents, a bandstand on a semi-trailer, a bunch of tables and booths, and about nine million people. It was the day of the annual neighborhood festival, and it had snuck up on us without our even realizing it. I read the sign on an easel board, which promised that the day's events would include a petting zoo and a visit from a fire engine. So it was pretty much just a matter of killing time until those things got started. We wandered around, he danced to the band, said "hi" to everyone, scored a free inflatable beach ball, and he even got to bounce around in a Moonwalk for a few minutes with some kids of similar age. He wasn't too devastated when his time was up, but I think that's only because he had no intention of leaving. I was only saved from having to go in after him by a couple of middle-schoolers sent in by the proprietor to fish him out at the beginning of their turn. Then he was devastated that he couldn't go right back in. "Go in there!" he kept demanding. Soon he got so upset that we had to leave the line where he was waiting to go back in. I called Trash to see if she had M. Small's lunch ready at home yet, and when she said she did I suggested that maybe she could put it aside and we could get him lunch at the festival. She agreed, and came and found us a few minutes later. By the time he'd finished his lunch, the fire engine had arrived, the petting zoo was all set up, and there were even ponies schlepping kids around in a circle. M. Small experienced all of these wonders and more, and when we bought him an ice cream bar with our last food ticket and ferried him home in his increasingly sticky stroller. The whole time, Trash had this look on her face that I recognized. It was the look she used to get when we'd watch third-season episodes of Northern Exposure and Rob Morrow was still experiencing local annual events for the first time. "Does this happen every year?" she asked. "I'm sure it does," I said. "It's just been completely off our radar." "For thirteen years? A block and a half from our house?" "I'm pretty sure that in thirteen years, we probably drove past this thing going on at least once or twice, took one look at it, and said, 'God, no.'" "Ah, that must be it." You think you're going to still be cool even when the kid comes along, that you won't instantly become completely square. And you don't. It's not instant. But it's weird, all the unpredictable ways your perspective changes when you become a parent. To give your kid a thrill, you'll spend hours at an event you wouldn't have been caught dead at two years ago, and not just because you would have still been in bed when it started back then. That's not the most worrisome change, though. That would have to be the way we've recently started to find America's Funniest Home Videos actually funny sometimes. We don't even recognize ourselves any more when that happens. posted by M. Giant 7:24 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
I used to love babysitting for just that reason. (Well, and the kid I sat was a gorgeous wee lad.)
By
A couple of months ago, we went to a concert in the park because our neighbor was in the band. We were thinking it would be, you know, a BAND. But it was a band, the kind that plays Sousa marches and where the conductor makes quips about tubas.
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Okay, but if you start liking Two and a Half Men or I hear you say "...those Curious Buddies are every bit as good as old Sesame Street," you are toast. I think I can speak for Linda and Bitter, too, come to think of it: we get your folks to take Small to "an undisclosed, safe location" and then we lock you two in the basement. You get time to yourselves, plus our "re-training" regimen.
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(Psst. Do not tell anyone, but AFHV is actually pretty funny. I mean, it takes me a glass and a half of wine on an empty stomach to think so, but it is AWESOME for drunkards.)
By Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Tiger On Trash and I had pretty much resigned ourselves to either spending thirty dollars on a Halloween costume for M. Small or making my mom sew him one. Then we were all at Target the other night, were they were selling toddler-sized, full-body animal suits for ten bucks. Trash took a Dalmatian suit and a tiger suit off the rack and held them in front of M. Small, telling him, “Pick!” He loves to “pick.” It’s very nearly his favorite thing. In most cases, he enjoys “picking” even more than the thing he “picked,” whether it’s his next snack, the shirt he’s wearing today, or the one toy he’s allowed to bring into day care in the morning. When you live with two people who can and will physically lift you away from places they don’t want you to be, just the fact of having any measure of control over your life will often be better than your actual choice. Not in this case, though. Sitting in the baby seat of the shopping cart (man, I remember when I actually used that space for carrying smaller items instead of a human being), he rapidly extended both arms towards the bright-orange tiger suit. His choice was clear. And if it hadn’t been the fact that he didn’t let the thing out of his grasp for the next 16 hours would have communicated his preference quite effectively. Trash even had trouble getting him to let go of the part with the UPC tag long enough for the to scan it. She put it on him when we got home, just to see what it would look like. I tried to take a picture of him in it, but he was so excited about seeing himself in his new lovey that he didn’t even wait for me to take the picture before dashing around to try and look at it. "Tigger!" he kept crying triumphantly. Shortly after that, I had to go downstairs and watch Rock Star. By the time the show was over, he was already in bed. I got started on my recap, and a couple of hours later, I looked in on him before going to bed myself. Trash had somehow managed to get him out of the tiger suit, because he was sleeping in his pajamas. And he was wearing the tiger suit over them. "He insisted," Trash said when I asked her about it. "I could barely get it off him to change him in the first place. He kept saying, 'Tigger on, Tigger on.'" "Well, he should be plenty warm tonight, at least," I admitted. "What if he wants to wear it to day care tomorrow?" "Then he's wearing it to day care," Trash said in the tone of someone who had already been through this battle once. We managed to prevail upon him to not wear it to day car the next morning. He did insist on carrying it with him, though. He was holding onto it with both hands when I tried to put his jacket n him to leave. "You only have to let go of it with one hand," I wheedled. "Okay, now the other hand." So at least he didn't walk into his day care house looking like a tiger, but rather like a character from some "Hemingway Babies" cartoon. When we picked him up that evening, the day care lady told us that he had insisted on holding it for the whole morning, but in the afternoon had been content with keeping it in sight at all times. Somehow, on the short ride home, Trash managed to distract him with snacks and the promise of dinner sufficiently that we were able to get him out of the car without it. We figured we'd sneak it into the house after he went to bed, and he'd forget about it until Halloween. We forgot to do that, of course, and the next morning he was quite excited to see "Tigger" balled up next to his car seat. But he brought a truck inside the day car house anyway. I assume that because his love for Tigger was so intense, his connection to it burned out faster than with most of his loveys. But don't worry; he wasn't between loveys for long. Today, Trash found the switch on a hand-me-down toy fire engine that makes it wake up and talk to him. The day care lady should love that. posted by M. Giant 9:17 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I couldn't help but think of past loveys when I finally went to Cars this weekend, whenever I heard Bonnie Hunt's voice I thought to myself "M.Small's girlfriend..."
By I can totally relate to your experience. Not more than three weeks ago I bought my three year old a plush pumpkin cosutme (her choice) which she couldn't wait to get on. Not only did I have to convince her to hold off until I paid for it, I barely had my change in my hand before she pulled it on and was parading through the mall. We're definitely getting our money's worth this year.
By Is it wrong to talk about your Rock Star recaps her? Because your recaps were the only reason to watch the show. They were BETTER than the show. The show should hire you to write lines for TLee, because your lines would be better. Are you coming back next year to do it again?
By My son was never this emotionally attached to any object until he reached his teen years. I am told, however, that when I recieved my first little triccycle I remained on it the rest of the day and then slept all night with one arm reaching between the bars of my crib holding the handlebars.
By Saturday, September 16, 2006 The Small Minnesota Freak-Out A partial list of things M. Small loves: Cows. Sheep. Bunnies. Horses. Drums. Cars. Fire Engines. Music. Buses. Slides. Unhealthy food. Nana and Grandpa. So naturally, we brought him to the Minnesota State Fair a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure if he's had a more exciting day before or since. The adventure started off with a huge thrill for him, when he took his first bus ride. He's been identifying buses out loud since before he knew how to make an "s" sound, which led to months of excited cries of "Buh!" during almost every car ride. But this is the first time he actually got to board one. Better yet, we sat in the swiveling section of an articulating bus for even more excitement. "Hold on," we told him. "Hold on!" he answered. We probably could have stayed on the bus at the fairgrounds and ridden it right back to the park & ride, and he would have considered that a full day. But we had to hit the livestock barn first. Given M. Small's longstanding fascination with cows, I've always thought that the first time he came face-to-snout with one in person would send him into a state of miniature Beatlemania. On that score, I was disappointed. There were some calves hanging out in pens, to which M. Small pointed and calmly said, "Cow." But surely the sheep would blow him away, right? "Sheep," he remarked mildly to an ovine specimen. Shortly thereafter, a piglet was born at the other side of the barn and someone had seen fit to project the blessed event on an unavoidably gigantic video screen. Since we never signed up for the miracle of birth (we even adopted, remember?), we were out of there. Probably the animal he was most excited all day was in the poultry and rabbit barn. "Ranger," he said to one shaggy blond bunny, noticing its tonsorial resemblance to the thusly named dog at his day care who is about a hundred times its size. But that was cool with M. Small, because then he got some French fries from one of the nine million stands. Okay, I got them for him, but he still had to say "Fries, please" in order to get any. For some reason, he's started occasionally saying "Donuts," so we got a sack of mini-donuts. Because he's not very big, I did him a favor and ate most of them for him. You might think that a small child strapped into a stroller can't gravitate. You would be wrong. Because when he heard the music coming from a live band at one of the free stages, it was immediately clear that was where we were going. As it turned out, this was the ideal band for him to check out, because they happened to have a huge expanse of plywood on the ground in front of the stage for use as a dance floor. Nobody was dancing who was over the age of four, of course. But when we unstrapped M. Small, he ran right out there and started dancing like a five-year old. I have no idea where he learned some of those moves. After three or four songs, the knees of his pants were filthy from powersliding. My parents and my sister DeBitch the Younger arrived during this display, which made it easier for all of us to position ourselves around the perimeter of the dance floor lest he take it into his head to suddenly bolt into the crowd and disappear. We needn't have worried. We practically had to use dynamite to get him out of there. After that, it was off to the Super Slide, where you rent a burlap mat for two bucks and then sit on it to go down a nine-hundred foot slide. We weren't sure if M. Small would enjoy this, even sitting on my lap, but we hadn't even stopped moving at the bottom before he was saying, "Again!" Fortunately, by this time it was just about time for the daily afternoon parade through the fairgrounds. M. Small loves not only parades, but each individual element of parades. I put him up on my shoulders, so I couldn't see his expressions when the horses clopped by, or when marching band after marching band marched past, banging those noisy things he's found so very fascinating ever since he wandered in while Trash was watching the end of Drumline. Or even when the old cars and fire engines wheeled along in front of him, the latter blowing their sirens and running their flashers. I could, however, feel his entire body vibrate with excitement throughout. It was one of those times when you're glad your child is still wearing diapers. "He's going to get a great nap this afternoon," we all agreed. But then we got home and Phantom escaped, so we couldn't really enjoy the quiet that much. posted by M. Giant 7:55 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
Until you add the software plug-in that allows readers to order tiny donuts through your site, it seems cruel for you to mention them.
By I LOVE the state fair - especially the animal barns. If you would like, I would be happy to bring M. Small to the fair next year. We can sit with the animals for hours.
By
M. Small needs a copy of the book "Where's My Cow?" (No, seriously, go to Amazon and look at it.)
By I can't believe he didn't escape during the dancing portion of the afternoon. Apparently your perimeters work better than Kiefer's.
By Sunday, September 10, 2006 Skipping Church I try to avoid clichés on this blog, not always successfully. I also try to avoid clichés in life. That's even more embarrassing when it's unsuccessful. For instance, after M. Small's baptism, everyone joked with us that now that we had that sacrament out of the way, we would probably quit going to church entirely. We scoffed at such naysaying. Then, the evening of the following Sunday, I was out for a walk when we ran into the priest who had baptized M. Small. And you've already guessed, I'm sure, that we had all skipped church that morning. This isn't supposed to happen in a big city. It's more of a small town thing, where people who skip church worry about going out the rest of the day for fear of encountering their clergyperson. But on the other hand, we're in a small parish. And as I later learned, we live about four blocks from our priest. So it's like living in a small town in that sense, except that we also have Sex World. If I'd been alone, I could have ducked into the bushes, I suppose. But under the circumstances, it would have been bad form for me to vanish and leave an occupied but unattended stroller on the sidewalk. Especially if our priest recognized its occupant. That would have been, to say the least, counterproductive. So I went with the other extreme, heartily greeting her by name, acting all pleasantly surprised to see her, the whole bit. She talked to M. Small, asking if he remembered her baptizing him the week before. M. Small was no help at all, making a couple of nonsensical, context-free comments that I had to explain. "He's normally very smart," I wanted to say. She asked if I was giving Trash a little alone time for the evening. "Yes," I said. "She hasn't been feeling well lately." "You lied to your priest?" my coworker said when I told her this story on Monday. But I assured her that no, in fact, Trash was not feeling well, which was part of why we'd skipped church that morning in the first place. (Also, we'd already gotten M. Small baptized, so why bother? Kidding). But anyway, I wasn't going to be all embarrassed and awkward, just because we hadn't been to church that morning. For all I knew, neither had she. And besides, how cliché would it be to act guilty when running into your priest on the day you skipped church? So we stood and talked for a few minutes, and then we went on our respective ways. And then, when I was sure I was out of sight, I whipped out my cell phone. "You'll never guess who I just ran into," I told Trash. She managed to lift her head from the toilet long enough to hear the story. From her reaction, I was pretty sure that in my place, she would have dove into the bushes. The good news is that we've been that much more motivated to make it to church every Sunday since. And of course we always make sure that our priest sees us there. Who knew that skipping church could actually be good for the soul? posted by M. Giant 8:31 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I was catsitting for some folks who live in the Warehouse District downtown. I was simply walking to go visit the cat, by way of Washington Avenue, across from Sex World, when I ran into a professor. We had to stand there, exchanging pleasantries, while both of us pretended there wasn't a Sex World across the street. It was really quite a strange, strange meeting.
By
I know it sounds like an urban legand, but the first time my boyfriend and I bought condoms, we get to the counter and find that we are directly behind his neighbor, who he had known since he was about 3 years old. There was nothing we could do - we were both there, it was our only purchase, we were screwed.
By God has a sense of humor. I once skipped church to color my hair. 'Ginger spice' is the name of the flashy auburn color my hair was supposed to turn. Ronald McDonald Flaming Red is the color I got. I was afraid to try coloring over it and ashamed to call the 1-800 number on the back of the box. Instead of a scarlet "A" on my chest for my sin, I had scarlet hair on my head. I just let it be that way for a while and chose instead to tell people what I had done. It's a sure conversation starter. Since that time, I have only allowed a professional to color my hair. Ronald doesn't need the competition and God doesn't need another laugh like that at my expense.
By
See, I don't go to church, but my parents do, and I live in my hometown.
By Thursday, September 07, 2006 Varmint I accidentally caught a raccoon last week. You might think that capturing a wild arboreal nocturnal beast inside the borders of a large city would be kind of tricky without some doing, not to mention determination, luck, and some specialized equipment. Of which I only had one or two. So here's what happened. Last Sunday, when we got home from the State Fair (entirely other entry there, don't even get me started), M. Small had fallen asleep in the car and we wanted to transfer him into his crib without waking him up. We're always very careful not to slam the door at such times. This time we were so careful about not slamming the door that we failed to get it closed at all. We didn't know this until M. Small was in his crib (still asleep). I just happened to decide to carry a chair from our upstairs bedroom back to the garage, which is when I noticed the back door was open. Otherwise it might still be that way. As it was, I arrived in the study just in time to see Turtle lurking just inside the gaping door frame, deciding whether to make a break for it or not. Since she's the least escape-minded of our three cats, I knew we were in trouble. Sure enough, when I stepped outside Phantom was standing in the driveway. I turned away just long enough to shoo Strat back into the house from where he was lurking on the deck, and that was the last time I saw Phantom that day. So instead of wasting a lot of time like the last time this happened, I got right in the car and went to the Humane Society to rent a trap. I brought it out back, next to the garage, set it and baited it with an open can of tuna, and draped a beach towel over it to make it a little more cozy-looking. And then we waited. If by "waited" you mean "started looking out the back window every five minutes to see if she'd shown up." The trap was still empty and unsprung when we went to bed that night, and at 2:30 a.m. when M. Small woke me up for a few minutes. But early on Monday morning, when the construction crew arrived, the door had snapped closed, and a pair of eyes were staring out at me from behind it. Black-ringed eyes, with a pointy nose under them. Pissed eyes. This was a big ol' raccoon, not just a squirrel with stripes. I have absolutely no idea how that fat monster even found the room to turn around in there. The first thing I checked for was Phantom-colored fur scattered around the immediate area. There was none, but that beach towel was a goner. That raccoon must have gone through quite a bit of effort to get out of that trap, because by the time I found it, because there was more of the towel inside than outside. So then I had to get the critter out of there. Just holding the door open wasn't going to cut it, because it had no intention of getting that close to me. I suppose I could have just brought the trap back to the Humane Society with the raccoon still inside, but we didn't have Phantom back yet and I didn't think they'd swap me for an empty one. So there was nothing for it but to reset the trap, so the raccoon could leave while I was a safe distance away. So then I had to fiddle with the catch for a few minutes, with a towel-killing set of teeth and claws just inches from my fingers. Did you know that raccoons hiss when they're mad? Because they do. So anyway, I reset the trap and went back up to the house, where I watched the raccoon lumber out of the cage and around behind the garage. Poor beast didn't even get any tuna -- it had been standing on top of the overturned can for hours. So then I rebaited it, but it turned out to be moot, because Phantom came home that night. Walked right up onto the deck and let Trash pick her up. Maybe she'd decided it's safer inside after she saw the raccoon. posted by M. Giant 9:21 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:What an adventure...
By I guess the threat of rabies means that trumps my "chipmunk loose in the house" story. Shucks.
By
Ugh...I love raccoons, the little masked devils, but they are mean when they're cornered. I used to call for 'our' cat (who was feral despite my best efforts to make him my pet) and have our resident raccoons and their babies come up on my porch. Cute, but...dude, those things carry rabies....eeewwww!
By I'm a country girl and raccoons were pretty common growing up. My sister, however, moved to Manhattan a couple of years ago, and was pretty shocked to find a raccoon in her kitchen one night, eating her bananas. Luckily, she was too asleep to be afraid, and when she yelled "Shoo!" angrily at it, it abandoned the bananas and scampered back out the window. Not quite what she'd expected from the city.
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