One day, a group of loggers took down a really big tree and out tumbled five baby raccoons. They were crying and scattered all about. The men felt sorry for them, so everybody took one home. I don’t think the neighbors were thrilled to have pet raccoons in the neighborhood, but my siblings and I were delighted. My Mom named ours Peggy. Peggy quickly learned her name and the word “NO!” I think she thought her name was PeggyNO.
Peggy, like other raccoons, was extraordinarily cute, with quick, jerky movements and incredibly agile little black hands. She started out drinking goat milk from a tiny bottle, but quickly advanced to raw vegetables and fruit. She also loved bread and especially pancakes. She dunked everything into water before eating it, like washing the dishes. I’ve heard raccoons do that to add water for digestion. I don’t know about that, but watching her wash the food made us laugh, especially when the food dissolved.
Once, we gave her a chunk of ice cream. By the time she washed it, it disappeared, melted in the water. She came to us for more and we saw the dog drinking up all the ice cream flavored water. Another time when she got a piece of cookie, it too, turned so soggy wet that there was nothing left to eat. That time, Peggy lapped up the loaded water herself.
As she grew up, Peggy was always in trouble. Mom did not care for some of her more mischievous habits. For instance, Peggy loved to play in running water, so she learned how to turn the hose on. Naturally, she never felt the need to turn it off, which annoyed Mom quite a bit. On hot afternoons, she sometimes prevented the horses from drinking by swimming around in their water tank. The cows though, didn’t seem to mind at all.
Many things caught Peggy’s eye. When she saw something she liked, she carried it off like a prize for her collection. As a baby, she lived in our house for only a week or so before Mom made a place for her in the barn. I don’t know if Peggy ever actually slept there, but she kept her collection there. She did not limit her raiding to our property, and collected an astonishing treasure trove of small objects from our neighbors as well as our house.
She had clothespins, some of Dad’s tools, like sockets and a little screw driver, a doll’s head—though I blame my brother for that more than Peggy—and pieces of a broken flower pot. Peggy took good care of her prizes; everything was clean and washed, too. The collection changed from time to time, and we often went there looking for lost things.
She liked to be involved in whatever we were doing. If we raked leaves, shoveled snow, swept the porch, or did any job with a handled tool, Peggy would ride on it. She would grab the handle and sit on top of the broom or whatever. We would tell her, feebly, to get off, because she was funny and we didn’t really want to do the work anyway. By adulthood, she weighed over thirty pounds and was way too heavy to move when on top of a tool. Peggy didn’t believe us, so wouldn’t get off. Mom didn’t believe we were very serious either and made a point of ruining all the fun.
Peggy did not limit her mischievous antics to our house. Mostly her thieving went unnoticed, or at least, we never heard about it, but there was one time when Peggy caused quite a neighborhood ruckus. We had one neighbor whose complaints we rarely listened to, because he complained constantly. His name was Louie something. We called him Loopy when our parents weren’t around to tell us to stop it.
Loopy was a little old oddball who lived alone in a huge, decrepit farmhouse. But that’s not what made him odd. He made what he called “communication devices” and antennas from things he hauled home from the dump. He displayed them all over his yard. I couldn’t imagine people buying them, but somebody must have, because that was how he made his living. Loopy brought home chunks of black top, or asphalt, and assembled them on his driveway like a giant jigsaw puzzle. He also hung whirly-gig wind catchers and streamers from his yard sculptures. He told people that he communicated with spacemen and extraterrestrials with all that stuff. His place looked like a massive junkyard. Peggy thought it was Disneyland. She was always coming home with stuff that we knew came from Loopy’s yard.
One of Loopy’s constant complaints involved us kids messing with his stuff and, as he thought, stealing it. Our parents knew it was Peggy doing it, but didn’t want Loopy to know about her. Loopy didn’t have any animals or pets because he said they all have rabies. We didn’t think he would understand about our raccoon.
Anyway, one evening when it was almost dark, we were about to go inside for the day when we heard Loopy hollering and swearing. We thought about going to check on him, but this had happened before so we negligently ignored him. It was only about fifteen or twenty minutes later that a police car and an ambulance came down the road with lights and sirens wailing. They both turned in at Loopy’s driveway.
Apparently, Loopy had called the police to report an alien sighting. He told the police that he was checking on one of his pieces of equipment and saw a tiny, bony, black hand slowly reaching out at him. It tried to grab his shirt. Loopy lost it. He ran yelling and scared into his house and called for help. That is what we had heard.
Of course, the police didn’t discover any aliens. They suggested that it might have been a prank. That’s when Loopy told the police that if it was a prank, us kids probably had something to do with it. So the police came knocking on our door to talk to our parents. When the police told us what Loopy said, we laughed and laughed. Even Mom and Dad were laughing. We were all aware that just moments before the police came, Peggy had come home with more Loopy loot and ran off to the barn with it.
The part of the story about the alien with tiny black hands was just too funny to stop laughing. I’m sure the police suspected we knew something, but they left us alone and went away chuckling themselves. Peggy didn’t go over to Loopy’s place much after that. I think the yelling, lights and sirens unnerved her.
Peggy did not stop getting into trouble, though. One of her last antics at our house involved unpinning every single piece of laundry that Mom had hung out on the clothesline to dry. After the clothes were down on the ground, Peggy rolled around in them and our dog dragged some around the yard. They were a torn and dirty mess when Mom discovered them. Furious, Mom locked Peggy in the garage. She told us that when Dad got home she was going to ask him to take Peggy far away and leave her in some woods somewhere. All of us kids were sobbing and crying at this news but Mom was really mad. As it turned out, Peggy didn’t wait for Dad to get home. Cross at being locked in the garage, Peggy decided to entertain herself. We all heard a loud—and rhythmic—CRASH…CRASH…CRASH... coming from the garage.
When Mom opened the door, we watched Peggy, calmly walking along the shelves of canning jars, and slowly pushing them off onto the floor one by one to watch them smash. It seemed that Peggy continued doing it, deliberately, while watching Mom. Wow. We thought Mom was mad before!
Somehow, Mom got hold of Peggy and gave her a serious walloping on her giant, fluffy behind with a board. Peggy chattered and growled and ran off into the woods behind our house. She apparently took that spanking as the ultimate insult, because we never saw her again. But I am sure she lived out her days wreaking happy mayhem on countless victims. Mom maintains that raccoons are not worth the trouble as a pet… I’m sure Loopy would agree with her!