Coons and more...

​I was having dinner this week with one of my favorite clients, Harvey Peyton, and his wife, and they were telling me about a raccoon that had been terrorizing their neighborhood and just wreacking havoc, getting in their garage, and it reminded me of one of my craziest childhood stories.  They probably didn’t know what a redneck farm girl I was until I told them this story  Dad had this coon dog he was trying to train – he just loved going coon hunting.  Sometimes he would get lost in the woods and not come home until morning.  He’d tell a tale of sitting down on a log, falling asleep and waiting until morning to find his way home.  Can you imagine that being enjoyable?
 
When Terry and I were first married, he wanted to “bond” with dad, so they went coon hunting.  This coon is up in the tree and they can’t get it, and Dad says to Terry, “Climb up there and shake the coon down.”  Terry climbs up in the tree – pitch dark – can hear this raccoon screaming and clawing, and he’s shaking the tree, and then Dad starts shooting from below!  He says, “Here I am in this tree, trying for some unknown reason to shake this coon down on to my head, and then your dad starts shooting at me from below!”  I think that was his last time to go coon hunting with dad.

Anyway, dad has this new dog he was trying to train, and the way he did that was to take this raccoon that he had in a cage and put it on this metal leash thing and dangle this coon in front of the dog so it could get its scent.  The leash looked exactly like those leashes people used to walk around with in the ‘80s that had this invisible dog on it, if you’re old enough to remember those.  Anyway, he’d dangle this coon by its neck and it would claw and twist around as the dog barked and tried to get it.  It was quite the feat to hold the dog back while holding the coon aloft at the same time.  I was always telling dad that that was cruel, he shouldn’t be doing that, it was just mean, and some day that coon was going to get loose and let him have it.  He’d just laugh.

Well, one day it happened!  Somehow that raccoon sucked its neck in and got out of that collar with the dog nipping right at its heels, but it does not run off – instead, it jumps up on that metal leash and runs straight back up it and jumps on dad’s head.  It is screeching and clawing and spitting, and blood is flying and dad is yelling and the dog is barking and I am screaming and mom is running out of the house – oh, whoever thinks living on a farm is peaceful, that was not the day to illustrate that!  Dad finally got it beat off of him and I think got his shotgun and that was the end of him, but whew, what an afternoon!  Do NOT ever underestimate the power of a raccoon!
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I was telling Harvey and Jennifer this story, and they said that one of their neighbors had two dogs that would kind of torment this neighborhood coon, and the coon had somehow gotten one of the dogs down by a creek and held it down and drowned it!  Can you imagine?  Crafty ole devils they are!

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