Does it have The HydroPhobee?

In case you haven’t seen the movie Old Yeller, that’s what they used to call Rabies.

Yesterday
, I was the last one in the family to leave the house.  I walk out the back door headed to the mini-van, and there is a raccoon sitting in my driveway.  I stared at it and it stared back at me.  Then it slowly started walking away weaving back and forth.   

The first thing that popped into my head was “OMG it has the beginning stages of Rabies.  Which of my animals are current on their rabies shots?  Which of my kids are current on THEIR rabies shots…oh wait, kids don’t have Rabies shots.  Oh CRAP kids don’t have Rabies shots!!!”

So I’m standing there in the yard frozen with indecision.  We don’t own a firearm, for reasons we’ll discuss some other time.  Who around me has a gun and is willing to shoot?  Everybody has already left for work.  So I’m looking up the number for animal control on my phone with one eye, and keeping the other on the potentially rabid coon.  It is hard to use a Blackberry with just one eye. 

As I’m fumbling around with my phone, I see my neighbor leave his driveway.  Ohhhhhh…he is a wildlife officer out at the lake!!!  I run to the road and flag him down…which probably scared him to death.  He gets out of his truck.  He looks at it for a minute and says “Wellllll it COULD have rabies.”  NOT makin' me feel any better here Alan!!  We watch it a few more minutes and then we see that it has a broken back leg.  Still no one around with a gun to put it out of its misery.  Alan says it will probably wander off during the day.

I’d really forgotten about it.  The girls had practice at 5:30pm.  In order for us to make it on time, I have to fly home and they have to be in basketball clothes ready to go.  So I pull up in the driveway and no one is in sight.  THEN I heard the screaming. Madi is running from the back five acres bawling hysterically.  Frank is right behind her with Scrappy in his arms, and the other two girls are hot on their heels.  I could not IMAGINE what was going on. 

Madi reaches me first and she says “Mom, it’s leg is broken.  Frank broke its leg.”  I see Frank running with Scrappy and all I can think is “OMG, Frank broke Scrappy’s other leg!!!!”

Frank finally catches up.  Madi is continuing “There is a raccoon back there and Frank is beating it with a stick.  And he beat it so much he broke its leg.  He’s trying to kill it.”  At the same time Frank is saying “Mom, Scrappy was attacking it and they were fighting and I couldn’t get Scrappy to stop so I only hit it with the stick once so I could get Scrappy.” Carlie adds in “I think Scrappy is bleeding.”  (Which he wasn’t.)  Inwardly I grown. “Ohhhhh…..the coon.” 

So I walk out to the field and the poor old coon is curled up in the middle of the pasture miserable.  It made me want to cry to think about shooting it, but there probably wasn’t anything that could be done for it either.

So I walk back to the new house.  There were three different groups of construction guys in the house working.  I walk into the house and say “Does anybody here have a gun in their truck?”  Boy THAT got a lot of wide eyes.  And then I think Duh!!! And explain about the raccoon.  None of them have a gun (that will admit to it anyway).

So a couple of minutes later the builder pulls in.  I say “I have a dumb question.  Do you happen to have a gun with you?”  He looks at me and says “No, I only carry a gun in my truck on Mondays.”  NO ONE is helping me here!!!  He goes “If it wasn’t something as mean as a raccoon, I’d go out there and hit it in the head with a 2x4 for you, but those things bite hard.  I look over at Frank and he says “I’ll go do it.”  Uhhh…no you won’t!!!

I left it out there in the field.  I didn’t go check on it this morning.  Hopefully it’s not still out there suffering.  I thought briefly…ever so briefly about opening up a raccoon rehabilitation center on our land.  I felt so badly for it.