Ranger, being the good first-alert dog that she is brought me out of me sleep with two insistent barks, but when all remained quiet after that, I drifted back off until another got my feet onto the hardwood to find her on the club chair in the library looking out the west window, tail wagging back and forth like a windshield wiper. I stepped beside her and scanned out and around the dark street. Nothing.
Then I looked and saw the furry, hunched over form on the porch railing and an audible “Wow!” escaped me for their sat the mightiest raccoon of them all. I grabbed my camera and moved to the foyer trying to pull some kind of image of the thing in the dark and through the window glass (above’s was the best of that bunch).
When it was finally alerted to my presence I moved to the front door and it clambered slowly down the rail to the porch floor where I allowed it to move across the threshold before yanking open the door, where it then did the coolest thing. Instead of running away down the steps, it climbed back up to the top of the railing and came back across threshold to the pergola above the porch where it shimmied up and out of sight onto the roof of the house.
So of course sporting nothing more than a pair of boxers, my camera and some questionable judgment, I exited the house, climbed up on the porch bench (making sure to turn on the flash), poked my head up through the top of the pergola and found him hangin’ out casual some more on the roof where I managed to snap these other three shots (the far left one being an obvious fave and most indicative of his massive scale; all click to quadruplify):
Eventually it trudged up to the top of the roof and I have no idea where it went. I swear this big fella would have fit snuggly in a large laundry basket. What a treat to behold and to get images of, even if it did abbreviate my shut-eye time.
Our first and only other raccoon encounter is posted here.
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