Last night was a crazy night.  I needed to run an errand that I had been putting off, so at 10:30pm, my niece and I head out of the house to drive across town.  The dogs had been driving us crazy going in and out of the patio door, so I decided to take both of them.  Cayla put the leash on Bella, I put one on Zipper, and we headed out the door.  I saw Bella almost drag Cayla down the porch steps and all of a sudden, Zipper started his high-pitched, excited bark.  I look over and see something scurry up my tree.  I’m used to seeing squirrels going up and down it, but these were bigger, and a lot of them.  I look over again and peeking behind the tree is a raccoon!  I have never seen a raccoon in my yard, let alone a bunch of them. All of them had run up the tree except this one, who kept peeking at me around the tree.  I was trying to get Cayla to come back near me to see him, but Bella was pulling her in a different direction.  I couldn’t help but laugh because the raccoon would peek around, see me looking, then disappear again behind the tree.  We did this game for about 2 minutes.  Cayla was finally able to make it back on the porch to see him while I held the dogs.  She saw the game we were playing and then it ended as he also went up the tree.

 

We used the flashlight on my phone to try to look up the tree to see all of them, but had no luck.  I needed to get something out of the van, which was parked under this raccoon climbed tree, so I unlock it and cautiously approach.  It’s like I was waiting for a raccoon to swipe my ankle from underneath as I approached the van.  Cayla, laughing at me, had to remind me they were poltergeist raccoons, but for some reason, I was just waiting for them all to start launching themselves at me in an attack as I neared the van!  Luckily I was able to enter and exit without harm, other than my pride as I was being laughed at.

As we were backing out of the driveway, we saw something come down out of the tree.  Assuming it was the raccoon, we looked to see where he headed off to….only to our surprise, it WAS NOT a raccoon, it was something else!  It was long, skinny, and seemed to have a funny walk.  We drove in the direction to see what it was, only to discover it was just a very skinny cat.  Wait…a cat???  What the heck was going on up in my tree?  An animal party?  I have raccoons AND cats up there at the same time!  All we could do was laugh at the situation!

We headed across town, turned down a road leading to our destination, only to see another odd-looking critter go running across the road.  We still have no idea what it was.  We tried to find it, but couldn’t.  While I was stopped for a few minutes, something round hit the top of my truck on the moon-roof and then rolled down the windshield and was gone.  It would not have been a big deal, except for the fact I was nowhere near a tree!  Now things are falling from the sky?!?!  What was going on?

As we pulled out of the driveway to head back home, we see yet another strange critter running across the path in front of us, but this time, we were able to identify the creature.  It was my favorite stinky friend; a skunk.  We waited, wanted to be careful to allow extra time for him to get where he was going before driving past him, especially considering all the craziness happening with the various critters.

As we were going along Gregory in Swope Park, my niece says, “deer”  I look, I don’t see anything, she says it again and I see a doe in front of us, off to the side of the road.  I slow down, giving her time to decide what way she was going to go.  She sees us, and then turns…..but does she run?  Oh of course not, that would be too much like normal and the night was anything BUT normal! This crazy deer turns and walks directly in front of us, down the street, with ATTITUDE!!!  I’m not kidding!  Her tail was SWISHING back and forth…..we both started laughing.  It was too much.  We follow her a short ways and then she runs off to the other side, as if to say, thanks for playing…see you soon!

We arrived home, no sign of our masked bandits in the tree, no sign of any other crazy critters in the yard.  I guess our crazy night of animals gone wild was over.  It was a humorous night for the two of us, the dogs were happy because they got to go for a ride in the truck, and my errand was complete.  All in all, it was a successful, adventurous, humorous trip!

 

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