Tuesday
Sunday night, before going to bed, I filled our hummingbird feeders, which are located outside our breakfast nook. When I got up the following morning, the entire feeder was missing, even though it hung from an overhanging eave and required a step stool to refill. It was a mystery.
I immediately suspected racoons since they had invaded our home once before. Years ago, when my parents kept bird seed in a large garbage bin on the screened-in back porch, raccoons cut through the screen, worked their way through the thick bungee cord holding the lid down, and dived in. Because the theft opened up a second front in a war on my parents’ attempt to feed the birds—flying squirrels were already cleaning out our offerings—my parents gave up.
My suspicions about the recent theft proved correct as we finally found the stolen feeder on the porch roof. The raccoons had come down from above, reaching over the eave and unhooking the feeder before absconding with it. Then they bit out the bee guards and drank the sugared water.
I found a wonderful Kathryn Nuernberger poem about racoons working their way into our dark imaginations. The speaker recalls witnessing a night time coon hunt that traumatized her as a child. If a parent must abandon you in the dark to grapple with raccoon enemies, then a child can only conclude the worst. “Now you are ours,” her fears tell her.
You Are Afraid of the Dark
By Kathryn Nuernberger
You are afraid of the dark,
for which you blame the raccoons,
or more to the point, your father,
who took you and your mother
into the night with a flashlight
and shotgun, then left
with both, while you held
her shaking hand. You
would follow your father
to the end of the world,
those distant birch woods
where raccoons rustle
and flash their green eyes.
His gun was firing
into the persimmon trees
and the rain of leaves and ripe fruit
fell farther and farther,
until only the crackle
of his shots and the distant baying
of the hounds could be heard.
The raccoons came then
to hiss all around:
he left you, he left you,
and now you are ours.
Think of the children whom ICE is separating from their immigrant parents. What nightmares will hiss around them?