This is Pepe. He is our raccoon. And when I say ours, I mean he lives in our house. Allegedly, if you want to be precise. Under the house. In the crawl space. In the crawl space that was boarded up and blocked by several bricks. Apparently Pepe is quite strong.
Pepe came to visit almost four weeks ago for the first time. Well, that's when he made his presence known to Angela and I. We were eating nachos, watching TV and he walked across the top of the fence outside the living room windows, stopped and peered in. For some reason I yelped, jumped up and shut the window. We have screens. We have bars. But I thought Pepe might still come in. The photo above is our first interaction with Pepe. It was still light out, just barely, and he walked back the way he came and disappeared. I did not follow him. Angela didn't either but to be fair she was on crutches and in an arm cast.
This is the next night when we saw Pepe again. This time he paused in the second window and waited as I took about 10 photos. I think he knew I was getting the light just right. Then he climbed down the end of the fence and strolled down the sidewalk like he owned the place. And frankly, after seeing his paws and claws, he does.
This is the last time I took a photo of Pepe. It was a couple of nights later, much earlier in the evening, and he looks like he groomed himself for the photo shoot. He looks good. He watched me for a moment and then headed on down the fence to the sidewalk. After that we didn't see Pepe for almost a week. I'd tweeted and Facebooked about him and we concluded that he must have known his five minutes of fame were about up and was heading elsewhere. Maybe north for the summer. This turned out not to be true.
Last week Pepe showed up again. This time I didn't even bother to get up and shut a window or snap a picture. He came by a few nights in a row and I placed a call to my friendly pest control company. They assured me they could tango with Pepe.
Fast forward to this week. After several other phone calls and landlord dealings, the day had come to find Pepe a new home. For the night at least.
It's bright and shiny and very close to his old home. (Look close and you can see the teeth/claw marks on the crawlspace window!) And when the two grown men who came to set it up asked me for a Rice Krispie treat (apparently a favorite of southern California raccoons) because they had brought a trap but no bait even thought I was told this endeavor was costing THOUSANDS of dollars, I smiled to myself. Pepe might just win this one.
And so last night I baited the trap with a broken in two Kashi blackberry breakfast bar. I don't keep Rice Krispie treats in the house. And apparently that bothers Pepe because he chose not to partake of my offerings last night. No one did. Not even the cat that overnights behind the grill and spends the early sun moments washing her fur like she's prepping for her own photo shoot.
This is what I found this morning at 6am.
Unsprung trap. Kashi bars still where I threw them. And no Pepe sighting last night. It's possible he can read and knew what all the hoopla was yesterday when the big red truck arrived and the two grown men stood around talking about how he might like living in Malibu. I don't think Pepe wants to live in Malibu. I think Pepe likes it here on Abbey Place. I mean we have nachos and dry crawlspaces and that pretty great fence. And no one will force you to eat the Kashi bars.
2 comments:
Kathryn Tuck
I haven't read your blog in awhile despite the fact you're prepping for your Paris trip, doing cool screenwriting things, and helping out the homeless. But, post a picture of a swarthy-looking raccoon peering in your living room and I'm "clicking thru" to the blog, as if it would disappear into the ether. Funny, but glad it's not happening to me!
We've had raccoons crawl across our roof before, acting as if it's a bridge between trees and yards…they sound like a herd of elephants when they do it.
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