Now was the Summer of Our Discontent...

So, I was re-reading past episodes of this blog…  Okay, maybe some explanation of my back-reading is needed.  When I stumbled upon this blog, how I do not remember, must have been the magnetic attraction of so many bright souls, I so darned wanted to comment on posts, but I had already ruined my standing on some other blogs by chiming in when I didn’t quite know what the blog was about or the exact bent of the blogger and commenters (oh, yeah, poor Beans got scorched, stuck to the pot so to speak, on other locations on the interwebs.)  So I went to the beginning and started reading all the posts and comments and eventually caught up and started commenting and then I got drafted by a nefarious cabal of cabalistic bloggers (must be Templar Freemasons of the Illuminati) and when I did a guest post it suddenly wasn’t a guest post and then I was official and there went all the royalty checks (THAT BOUNCED!!!) for providing post topics, all shoved into general salaries and benefits checks (which, surprisingly, have all bounced!!!) and then I started remembering that some of the topics I thought of for my future posts have already been posted by other posters in the ancient pre-Beans past posts and so it was time to go and re-read to see what has and hasn’t been discussed and there you have it.  Have I made myself clear yet?

I re-read Juvat’s epic fight with the tribe of Grendel, okay, skunks, rabid skunks, right after he decided not to vineyard his property.  (See  https://oldafsarge.blogspot.com/2014/09/summer-of-skunk.html for more details.)  And it brought back memories of an epic struggle against an evil tide of were-trash-pandas aka – Racoons.  Yes, Racoons.  Beans does not like raccoons, not at all, and this story may tell some of why raccoons are despised… Hates them…  Hates them, he does…..

Many moons ago, Beans and Mrs. Andrew lived in a lovely 3/2 house with a cement pond on 1/3^rd of a wooded acre backing up to woods, in a nice subdivision outside of a leftist cesspool, on almost the top of a hill (for Florida, a hill, the rest of you may call it a minor ground fluxuation.)  And Beans was tasked with the task of maintaining said cement pond, called ‘a pool’ that was fortunately under a screen room so that no leaves would get into the pool, at least until Mrs. Andrew decided the pool deck would be an excellent place to grow a containerized garden and plant some rose bushes and other things that shed leaves…  Grrrrr…

One day, early in Summer, Beans was pool-boying the pool, brushing the sides and such when he sensed the presence of EVIL at his 8 o’clock.  Because  Beans had seen bad horror movies, he knew that the appropriate thing to do was to slowly turn one’s head towards the evil, and so he did.  Lo, he spied upon a lattice (placed for to train the rose bushes to) a furry demon of a lower plane, a veritable evil trashus banditii, a raccoon.  Screaming at me.  Screaming and frothing and he lunged from the top of the latticework towards me (sorry, 3^rd person tense seemed so pretentious) and I used the pool brush pole to quickly intercept flying bandit and knock him from his aerial path towards my face.  A brief tussle ensued, with me using my fulsome pole-arm skills to attempt to whack the living snot out of the little screaming bastige.  Which devolved into a weird, bad SyFy movie version of Whack-A-Mole as I tore chunks out of that screaming bane of my existence, knocking him back, only to have him spring up and charge again, over and over.  Thinking quickly, I quickly swept the raccoon into the pool and using the brush end of the pole held the furry demon under water.

Taking a few long breaths while carefully checking myself for injuries while keeping an eye on the Thing I was holding under water, I started counting.  After what seemed at least 5 minutes, and no more bubbles, and waiting what seemed a few more minutes, I released the dead raccoon from the bottom of the pool.  I happily observed the dead, limp, non-moving body languidly float towards the surface.  I cackled with glee at my excellent movements with the pool-pole, the quick, decisive strokes that rained blow upon blow upon the furry beast and the brilliant decision to flick said beast into the watery depths of Doom.

And then the body broke the surface.  The skies darkened, ancient arcane voices were heard, and a black bolt of un-energy… Er, somehow, that damned beast came back to life, or, perhaps, un-life.  I immediately began emergency backup procedures, backing up while chopping furiously at the now insane guided fur-torpedo heading towards me.  I attempted using sonic shocks, by screeching like a little girl, a very loud little girl, to no avail.  Finally,  I managed to divert the Beast, and made  my escape from the pool deck to the porch deck and made one final spear toss with the pool-pole at Fur-Evil, I ran inside the house and slammed and locked the door.  That little bastard stood at my back door, chewing on the glass frame (it was a French Door, so maybe it should have surrendered, but it stood Maginot Line strong) and eventually the beast went away.  Leaving a large panel of screen ripped and forcing me to fix that huge hole (while looking ever over my shoulder for attacks from evil forces.)

Calls to County Animal Control confirmed that I was out of luck regarding the ‘coon.  If I got CAC traps,  and managed to trap the furry freak of nature, then CAC would charge me for removal of said ‘coon.  (I did tell you I live in a liberal hell of a county, right?)

Thus, the Summer of the Raccoon began.

Suddenly, there was a veritable horde of coons seen around my house.  Extrapolating from the lack of patchouli smells, unwashed bodies or ‘hempish’ vapors coming from my next door neighbor, I figured out that the communist hippy cultists that lived there had finally fled, been evicted, bodies repossessed by the mothership, and They (the hippy freaks) had been feeding a large population of raccoons.  Okay, I’m cool with wildlife, having a 10 foot rule, hard and fast, that pertains from ants to elephants.  They stay away from me, at least 10’, and things will be fine.  Otherwise (makes slitting throat motion while making gurgling noises.)  Hey, I’m part Norman-French.  Normans are the ones that taught Sicilians the meaning of the word ‘Vendetta.’

Afterwards, no sight was seen of ‘Foamy Mouth the Floating Undead Coon’ for at least a week or more.  Then, one dark and stormy night, Mrs. Andrew woke me up to the rather loud sounds of wood being chewed outside our bedroom window.  Lo, I sprang forth, after putting clothes and shoes on, to investigate, and saw a large, huge, big raccoon eating the wood siding under my bedroom window.  Mr. Coon was unimpressed with me yelling at it, only deciding to shamble off when I threw a 5lb hand weight at the jerk.

Daylight inspection showed a 3” hole eaten into my wooden fortress.  And more damage at my back door and porch windows, which meant, yep, even more damage to my screens (why is it always screens?  What?  Do I look like a Star Trek freak?) Game On!  County Animal Control being as useful as teats on a boar, and Mrs. Andrew not wanting wanton gunplay around our house, I contrived to attempt chemical means.  Getting a can of cat food, and mixing in half a box of mole poison (supposedly this stuff would kill anything, according to the box) I baited my back porch with the deadly mixture and sat inside and waited.  Sure enough, not an hour went by until Senor Snuffy, my old nemesis the Foamy Mouthed Undead Freak, came and sucked the dread gruel down and wandered off.  My dreams of SS standing up on his hind legs, grabbing his neck, turning circles and falling down DEAD now dashed, I at least rejoiced in the knowledge that he was living on borrowed time and underworld mob enforcers were coming for his pitiful soul.

Off and on, for days, I watched this raccoon stumble drunkenly around my yard, bouncing off of trees, until, on the third day, he had this massive spasm, his whole body shook like a rat in a rat-terrier’s mouth, and he… pooped a huge raccoon poop.  The Evil One straightened, turned around, looked at the turd, and, I swear, turned his head to look at me and then wandered away, perfectly fine, well, as fine as an undead eldritch horror straight out of HP Lovecraft could be, trapped in a raccoon's body.

Ohhhhh.  That sucked.  Status of failure of nefarious entity eradication program (NEEP) reported to Mrs. Andrew, I subsequently unearthed the fearless firestick, the boom of bang, the Remington 510 Bolt-Action, Single Shot, .22 cal Targetmaster!!!  And off to WallyWorld for a box of the most fulsome cartridge available to man, the .22cal Kurz…  Yeah, .22 Short.  Hey, don’t laugh, I was trying not to startle my jerk neighbors and surrounding idiots. 

The next day, while fixing breakfast, I heard the horrid sounds of claws cutting through screen as demons once again surmounted my porch in an attempt to scale the walls of my castle.  Load, unlock (the Rem 510 automatically engages the safety when loading a round) and aim and, bam, one down.  Hmmm, aimed low, caught him under the chin as he was coming down from going over a chair and pithed his miserable brain.  Yay, me!  (But was it my imagination as I heard the woods begin to shake and move, as the horde of trash-pandas postured and postulated retribution for their fallen fellow?)

Over the next few weeks, me and Mr. Remy went a-hunting, getting one coon about every two or three days.  Most only took two shots max (that hit, we won’t talk about the misses) before expiring.  Bodies disposed in trashbags in my garbage can and off to the landfill.

It was during one of these Deerslayer moments (the book, not the leftist propagandist movie of the same name that had nothing to do with the book) with me chasing down one wily offender while taking brief moments to pot a shot, reload, chase, repeat, when I chased one poor coon to that dark, still, haunted hole in the woods behind my  house.  Bastige stopped, looked at the hole, looked at me, and gave up.  I p-tinged him between the eyes, his body dropping not into the dark hole, and I bagged and canned another.

After going through 3 boxes of 50 rnds of .22 Kurz (okay, Short, geez, trying to make it seem more dramatic) with a success rate of about 1 coon per 5 shots, I racked up a sizeable mound (at the county dump) of dead bodies.  Titanic struggles, in the woods, on the plains (the open sections of my yard) and even one cheeky jerk in my attic, me chasing him in and out of the nest of wires, ducts and trusses, finally winged him, he stumbled, I shot again and he fell through the soffit over the front door like a terrorist at Nakatomi Towers on Christmas Eve!  

Yet I was victorious, ever victorious, cutting the enemy down one by one.  I was a crazed vigilante, going after Ranger Rick's evil brothers, sisters, cousins, kissing cousins, step kissing cousins.  I was Deathwind.

Only one huge bull male was left, and he was a crazed arsehole, pooping on my car window, chewing the water line to the house, attacking the pool pump and air conditioner.  Finally, after a 4 hour stalking chase, I cornered him under my shed (or should it be floored?)  Taking careful aim from 6’ away, I potted him between the eyes.  Tuft of fur, splash of blood, and I noticed my old nemesis, the Undead Walker, was before me.  I had 20 rounds, and expended 19 more, until I finally broke the eldritch wards and spells that kept his evil essence trapped upon this mortal plain.  From 5-7 feet away, shot after shot, I felt like a British cruiser potting shots at the Bismark.  Shots rained home, only for a snarling hisssss to come from my opponent.  Literally, the last shot remaining finally penetrated some horrid hidden portion containing a small demon, releasing it back to its plain of existence, and what resembled life fled the shattered body.  Victory, bloody victory was finally mine.

And then I had to drag and bag said corpse without splashing any fetid ichor upon myself.  And off to detox, delouse and defrag myself I did.

Apparently, in vanquishing the Cursed One, I broke the curse.  The horde was no more, and peace reigned upon the land.  Sun shined down, owls pweet-pweeted (seriously, amorous owls pweet-pweet amorously at each other), hawks called and dive bombed, Luna moth caterpillars munched upon my trees, and life was brighter, more full, more... more.

Soon after, developers finished the subdivision, banishing the woods, filling up the cursed hole, and no more evil forest dwellers bothered the House of Beans ever again.

Only Fred remained.  Only Fred… But his tail, er, tale will wait for another day.

Sorry, no photos.  The images were just too horrid to share with you.  Trust me.  Your sanity should be important to you.  Actual photos would cause you to lose sanity.

(and I finally convinced Mrs. Andrew to release the ROE, allowing .22LR to be used in defense of the homestead, too little, too late…  But now Mr. Remy has a Big Brother 870, and since I lived in the county I could have used up to, heck, an 8” howitzer as long as all the damage and blast effect stayed on my property, I was good to go.  Some, most of Florida is still a great place to live.  If I could have turned Foamy Mouth into a bloody mist, I would have.)