Rabid Coon

Short shrift. Dirty end of the stick. Either endemic or epidemic. Three in fifteen years, and one of the reasons I walk with a stout rod. It's a concession to the fact that I don't like to bend over so much anymore, but still like to poke at things, and serves to keep things at bay. There is no mistaking a rabid coon, aggressive posture, foaming at the mouth, lips curled back and bared teeth. Irrationally extreme in opinion or practice is the first definition, but when you live in the woods you think about hydrophobic convulsions. The one follows from the other. I make a note to look up rabies, because I don't know much about the disease, but it's been in the news, the last couple of years, infecting the local coon population. Transmitted by salivated fluids. Don't kissy-face a rabid dog. I was working the compost heap, burying some shit and covering it with ashes, thinking I might rake a few bushels of leaves on top, when this clearly psychotic fucking raccoon attacks. My weapon, at hand, is a shovel, and I knock the mother-fucker twenty or thirty feet away, then smash his skull with a tremendous blow from the back of the shovel. The whole incident is so fast, that the old part of my brain, fight or flight, took control; my hands are shaking so badly I can't even roll a cigaret. Tense is the least of it. That it would have been or that it was. That it exists at all is a testament to something. Darwin or Wallace. That when confronted with a rabid animal, you just use the weapon at hand, a brick or a shovel. Body disposal on the ridge means taking the carcass down the logging road, which is south and east, which is downwind, and the remains are gone in a few days. These little eye-of-round steaks, pounded out and smeared with adobo and chipotle, steamed potato browned in the same skillet, with eggs and toast, is one of my favorite meals. There's a nice piece on the radio, Adam Gopnik on salt. Then I listen to all of the Cello Suites, Rostropovich, while I mutter around, darning socks, clipping my nails, sweeping cobwebs off the ceiling; several times I literally plop on the sofa and listen to a section. If I had television I'd have watched a soccer game. Three guys go into a bar, an Irish priest, a homeless vet, and a Republican. The priest talks about the great famine, the vet talks about cooking a potato in the coals, and the Republican had already opened a fried potato joint in downtown Milwaukee. There's one priest in town that still wears a cassock, if that's the correct word, floor-length black garment, high-collared; a young guy, does community service, Thursday mornings at the Market Street Cafe, and once a month they have an open mike kind of thing at the pub, one of those "What Do You Believe" discussion groups. Though tempted, I've never gone to listen to one of the pub evenings, but I was often at the Market Street Cafe getting a cup of coffee when they started their Thursday meetings, and they seemed to be talking about interesting things. My idea of a good discussion group is four writers after a good meal with a couple of bottles wine, smoking, killing a bottle of single-malt, talking about commas; or discussing firewood with B, or Pinter with my daughter. I don't actually encourage idle conversation. Behind that gruff exterior there is a gruff interior, and it's not that I'm calloused, but more that I don't pay any attention to shit I can't do anything about. Crooked politicians and massive corruption are a fact of life. I'm not sure what the debt limit is, evidently it's paying the vig on a loan. I don't get it. The person with the greatest debt is the winner. Order me a Lear Jet.