Rabid Coon

Ugly sight, first thing in the morning, mangy raccoon slavering on the back steps. Killed it with a shovel because I didn't want to blast it all over my porch. Then dug a hole and buried it, then bleached the area where it had foamed on the steps. I don't know enough about rabies. Last of the cornmeal pudding for breakfast. I'd bought one of those larger cans of tuna, so I'd have a cooking ring of a useful size for something like this and it worked perfectly. The wind picked up, the leaves started falling, and it was mesmerizing, so I gave the rest of the day over to just watching them. The first of November and the leaves fall. A lot of people blow them around, or pay other people to blow them around. I never got the point of that. I rake them into piles and burn them, then rake the ashes out; a button or a bullet, maybe, from the ashes. Occasionally I find something interesting. I was squatting at the top of the driveway, taking in the light across the hollow, when I found a perfect small (bird-point) arrowhead. It startled me in its perfection because the entire driveway is compacted fill, back-hoed from a creek, trucked and dumped, graded three or four times, and here's this perfect small arrowhead. I clean it with spit and my shirt-tail. Chert, I think, or some rust stained quartz, it's a beautiful thing. I have a little wooden box of them, I don't remember where the box came from, 20 or 30 points and a couple of other things, worked stone as they say, and a coin I found, diving in Key West. It isn't gold and it's probably fake, but I like it, dated 1731.