Tripod’s Saga

I live in the country, on a number of lakefront acres remote from all others. My wife, a very soft touch where cats are involved, has been feeding a few stray cats who live in the area. She feeds them on our front porch, which runs nearly the length of our house. For convenience she keeps the sack of dry food inside a propane grill next to the front door.

One night a few weeks ago I was sitting in the living room watching TV and while fast-forwarding through commercials I heard an odd noise out front. Turning on the porch light I stepped outside.

The noise was caused by and adult raccoon standing on the support bars of the back of the grill in the manner of a kid climbing monkey bars. He was reaching through the narrow gap between the grill lid and body between the hinges, tearing apart the sack of food, and extracting handfuls of food.

I looked at him. He looked back at me with what I can only describe as calm confidence. There was five feet between us.

I said, “Get lost,” and slapped the bricks by the door. He returned to extracting and eating food.

I slapped the wall again, and still chewing he shot me a look like “I’m trying to work here.”

Amazed, I got my wife to come see him. Eventually he got tired of the attention and left, sauntering off as if to suggest that he knew of better places to be.

I put the cat food inside a plastic container inside the grill, and although I heard him banging around the lid of the grill a couple times later, that extra level of defense stymied him.

Then one night I heard the sound of metal on metal, which was very out of place. Stepping outside (armed), I saw the raccoon on the back of the grill again. Only this time he had a steel trap locked on his right front forearm; I had been hearing the trap’s anchoring chain rattling against the propane tank.

He had chewed his right wrist through, losing the paw, and was much skinnier than he had been before, but what hit me the most was his bearing-his eyes were wide and fearful, and he crouched in fear as he desperately scrabbled inside the grill. Gone were the easy confidence and swagger I had seen before.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then he clumsily hopped down and hobbled away at best speed, dragging the trap.

I’ve been a police officer for close to thirty years, and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, but that experience unsettled me. I have always loathed steel traps in any case, but I have never seen their terror at such a point-blank range.

I’m no bleeding heart- I’ve shot a lot of varmints, but I’ve always done my own killing and its always been as quick as a well-developed shooting skill can make it.

At work I located a rescue service for raccoons and at home I set out a box ‘catch em alive’ humane trap out on the front porch. I also went hunting for steel traps and even more importantly, whoever was putting them out.

My trap caught most of the freeloading feral cats my wife was feeding and one fat raccoon with all four legs, but no sign of the one I was looking for. I gave up on the trap but left a bowl of dry food out at night on the off-chance that he had survived and would come by. I got into the habit of checking out the door periodically to look for him.

Finally I looked out one evening and there he was: thinner, but glossy of fur and sans the trap, his paw-less limb tucked protectively against his belly as he limped to the bowl of cat food. He was still skittish, but he didn’t look as haunted as before. I christened him Tripod, and watched for him to make his nightly visits.

He devoured Iams dry food, leftover Thanksgiving turkey, Fancy Feast canned cat food and Cheetos. He got confident enough to eat with me or my wife sitting a dozen feet away, and has gotten pretty nimble and quick despite functioning on a three-wheel drive.

Two nights ago he brought a date to dinner, and when he eyeballed me I saw a touch of the brass and swagger of our first meeting. He is moving forward with his life; the trap cost him, but he has paid up and is pressing on with the business of living. There’s a lot of courage in that little body.

Last night he showed his gratitude for weeks of fine dining by stealing the stainless steel bowl we used for the food. I’m sure I’ll find it when it interacts with sixty buck’s worth of blades on my riding lawnmower.

He’s out there right now sleeping off a night’s foraging, curled up in a ball in some leaf-filled hollow inside a greenbrier tangle, perhaps snuggled up with his lady friend. I hope he understands he has an ally in the brick house, that someone is cheering him on.

But he’s going to be eating off paper bowls in the future