We've been having critter troubles lately.

A week ago last Friday, a squirrel managed to drown in our pool. So I got to pick him out (could have been a "her" for all I know - I'm pretty squeamish about looking, and I'm not well enough versed in squirrel parts to know if I could tell, anyway). Rigor mortis had set in, so it was like handling a little, furry statuette. That told me he'd been there awhile, but not too terribly long.

I bagged him up, and threw him in the dumpster. I forgot to say any words of condolence to his relatives. "He was a cute little guy..."

So we drained the pool, mopped it out and refilled it.

No sooner did we get that done, when my daughter comes down and informs me that we've got a raccoon on the back porch, eating the cat's food. The wife and I head out to scare it off and the bastard casually rips a hole in the screen and jumps out. So I put the windows back in and blocked the door with boards.

Next day, after church, we stopped at Fleet Farm and bought a live trap. I set it up by the porch, tossed in some cat food, and woke up Monday to find another cute little critter napping in the cage. I went back inside, put on some leather gloves and went out to haul him away. He'd rolled the cage on its side, so I had to roll it back. When I started to reach for it with my hand, the little bugger transmogrified into a demon, screamed and lunged at my fingers. Kinda took me aback. So I rolled the trap over with the bottom of my shoe. Got to see a couple more of those lunges. I picked up the cage and, carrying it out away from my side brought him around to the truck and loaded him in the back. I dropped him off in a park on the east side of the Mississippi. I don't think he'll find his way back.

Tuesday morning, before dawn, my wife and I are wakened by the screen porch door slamming and banging. Again. That was one of the symptoms of the previous feral burglar. I didn't do anything about it right then, except reboard the door, then I forgot about him until, late that night, when I was headed to bed I hear clattering and banging of the boards falling over. So I went roaring out the door... I think I had some kind of weapon, but I don't remember what. Fortunately, he hadn't quite made it in when I did that.

This time, I boarded, barred and blocked the door with every heavy thing I could find. He didn't come back that night.

I set up and baited the live trap again last night and woke to find another napping raccoon in it this morning. Hopefully, not the same one. Repeat of previous performance, but this time I took the litter p----rhead out east of 35W, just in case it was, indeed the same one and he knew the route from the park across the river straight back to my house.

I feel a little bad about something, though. All my friends are hunters and trappers (and fishermen, though that's beside the point), and I'm none of those things. I'm itching to get a pelt. I've never seen a litter of 'coons with less than three...I think the term is "kits."

The sibling or parent of those two twerps better keep that in mind.

I was watching some more episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies

again tonight. It really was a funny show.

Did you know that Irene Ryan died with a million dollars in the bank? Left it all to the whippersnappers.

Hard to hold her wealth against her: she was brilliant!