Scary Dream

I got a phone call at work today. It was Austin.

“Dad can I tell you a story about my scary dream?”

“Sure”, I replied.

“But you have to be very brave, okay?” he says.

“I’ll try my best”, I respond.

“I dreamed I was outside and slipped and fell over a cliff. I hid under a bush. It was kind of junkyardy. It was where the raccoons live.”

I asked, “Were you scared?”
“No, Dad, it was just my imagination!”

I just thought this was a hilarious story for a 3 ½ year old to be telling. And the setup to the story was fantastic. “You have to be very brave, okay?” He just makes me laugh so much.

So here’s a little background on the raccoon story. We’ve been working on our yard, specifically the front yard, and clearing out all the bushes and junk that have encumbered it for years. We have a street light in one corner of our yard that allows us to work fairly late into the night if we so desire. Angie happened to be doing just that a month or two ago while I was in putting the boys to bed (for some reason they wanted Dad that night). After a while Angie came rushing into the house rather frantically. She said she had been working on cutting out some bushes when a huge raccoon came toddling out of a bush over in the corner of our yard. It looked at her, but then slowly meandered along the side of our house and into our jungle of a backyard.

We’ve since conversed about this incident with some neighbors who’ve lived there a while and confirmed that they too have seen and had some run-ins with a raccoon family that meanders our neighborhood. No real problems to speak of, just that they are about and have been there for years. I think it’s kind of neat and would really actually like to see them, but no luck yet for me. Angie, on the other hand, has had her fill of them already and has proceeded to instill that same fear into Austin.

They had a picnic out on the deck one day and Austin threw part of his sandwich over the railing. Angie got mad at him and told him if he kept throwing food in the yard the raccoons would come eat it, then they would keep coming to our house for food, and might even get inside the house and eat all our food. So, Austin now is quite concerned about raccoons coming and eating all our food and is somewhat scared of them in general now.

Perhaps when we get our jungle cleaned up, our raccoon family will reside elsewhere. I hope I get to see them at least once before they leave though.