The sound was subtle, not loud, irregular.  I walked into the guest bed room and listened,–there it was. And then into the front room, again, but not so loud.  The thought came to me.  There is an animal on the roof.  Outside I went with my little flashlight, the batteries at their low ebb.  Crossing the driveway into the yard, I was conscious of the damp earth under my feet.  I’d silently creep around the chimney, coming up behind whatever was at work on the roof to get a good look.  What was it doing?  Was it having a meal, a dinner?  I have no basis for knowing where and how an animal would have a meal, but that’s was my best guess.

I looked up and there, it’s back to me, silhouetted against the sky, was a shape the size of a beach ball.  I couldn’t see its face, but it had to be a racoon.  I yelled at it, flashed my almost useless flashlight, a light almost as poor as my eyes in the dark.  The animal did not turn or seem to notice.

What else can I do?  I hurried around the yard to the drive way, and felt under the bush.  I came up with a large smooth stone, just right for throwing.  Back around to the other side of the chimney and the working animal.  I threw the stone.  The animal lumbered over the peak of the roof to the other side of the house.  I ran around the house,  I flashed my light and shouted at it.  Off it lumbered again to where it was before.

What can I do?!  I remembered the aluminum extension pole that was stored by the fence and the corner of the house.  Since the pole was at hand, I grabbed it.  I extended it to about 10 feet.  I walked around the house again with the pole in hand.  Once again the animal had its back to me, busy at its work.  I raised the pole and gave the animal a determined poke in its back.  At that it scampered away and disappeared.  There is a tree close enough to the end of the house, so I am sure that it went just as it came by climbing down the trunk of the tree.

The next day using a ladder I examined the roof top where the animal was seen.  It likely was a mother-to-be racoon, that had pulled away the metal soffit from the wood behind the gutter.  It was busy chewing through the wood, intent upon getting into the attic.  What better place to raise a brood of young than in a warm safe attic?  I plugged the whole with several pieces of fresh wood.  I expect the animal to be back.

This did not happen, but I fantasized about using my ladder to go up on the roof in the dark to have a face to face confrontation with the animal in the night.  A mother racoon, as are all mothers, would be a highly motivated animal.  We would face off, then grapple hand to hand.  Neither of us giving quarter, we’d fall off the roof, I badly bitten, and the animal with my hands around its neck.  And so we’d be found in the front yard, having defended to the very end what we found most precious.

That would be a better story.    All stories are fabrications of the imagination.

The lesson though to be taken away, has to do with the seriousness, the focus of the animal on the work necessary to have a suitable abode for raising its young.  Never mind the gesticulating human, with the sad little flashlight……

It is the stillest words which bring the storm.  Thoughts that come with doves’ footsteps guide the world.

—excerpt Thus Spoke Zarathustra No. 44 The Stillest Hour                                      by Friedrich Nietzsche