It was Spring. I remember it vividly, because it was a cold Spring. We were still getting snow in late May. We lived in a large rental home with a very small fenced in backyard. It was nice and grassy and good only for the patio space for grilling, but nothing you could run around in. We left food out for our neighbor’s cat. Her name was Zoey and the owner was never home and she loved us, but we couldn’t let her inside because my male cat is a complete asshole when it comes to other animals.
We had these double French doors that led to the back yard with big panes of glass in them. The cats loved to sit there and stare outside and soak up the sun. We even installed a squirrel feeder on the fence so they would have some “TV” to watch. My cats are indoor-only cats, when I was a kid I was losing a cat every six months to some speeding jackass in a car, so we adopted de-clawed ones and kept them inside. They live longer and so does my furniture. Dusty, the male, would attack the glass every time he saw another animal in our backyard. Just because he couldn’t go out there didn’t mean it wasn’t his territory.
One night he pounced on the glass like normal and I looked over and there, staring at me just as bold as could be, was the ratlike face of my soon-to-be nemesis, a raccoon. He had showed up to clean out the little bit of leftover food in the cat bowl we left for Zoey. I didn’t mind much at the time and everything was fine the next day. This continued for a couple of weeks. The raccoon would show up, clean out the little bit of food and then look right in the window like “Hey man, I’m hungry, can I get some more food?” I tried to scare the little bastard off by pounding on the glass but, as I soon discovered, he had balls the size of watermelons.
One day I went outside to feed Zoey (we only left her food if we saw her in the backyard), and I saw that someone or something had taken a horrendous dump on my lawn. It had to be at least two pounds’ worth and it smelled absolutely terrible. For the first time, but certainly not the last, the Phantom Pooper had struck. Little did I know, a war had begun! I cleaned it off and forgot about it until the next morning, when I went outside and discovered another giant steaming pile, in the EXACT same spot. Needlessly to say, I found this quite vexing. For the next week we fell into a routine. I would wake up in the morning to clean shit off my lawn and he would show up some time in the night to shit in the same spot. He was killing the grass and I was unhappy about dealing with raccoon feces as part of my daily ritual.
Thus began the nightly stakeouts. I would sit by the backdoor with the BB gun cocked and loaded and wait for the little bastard to show up in my yard so I could put a round into his ass. Unfortunately he would run away as soon as I started to open the door. I figured by scaring him off he would find another place to take care of business, but I was wrong. He would just come back later and do it all over again. I was actually starting to take this personally. Dusty (my male cat) actually provided me with an excellent warning system as he seemed to get into the spirit and would spend his nights with me, watching the backyard and would often notice the raccoon before me. But still, I would fail to catch him in the yard.
Eventually I moved my operation outside and would sit in the dark in a patio chair, like a serial killer stalking a victim. I used to hunt so I could sit for hours without moving or making a sound, but since it was being a particularly chilly spring, I was having issues staying warm due to anemia. Eventually I had to give up my outdoor stakeouts as he would never show up when I was outside, but still in the morning I would find a pile of turds in the same spot that needed to be cleaned up. It was during this time that I held various weapons in my hands waiting for him, a BB Gun, the garden rake and as my rage grew a very sharp samuri sword, because I intended to run the bastard clean through if I ever got the chance.
I decided to call animal control, who directed me to another guy who directed me to someone known as the raccoon lady. When I told her where I lived she said “That is pretty much in the raccoon triangle.” Really? A goddamn triangle? She also told me that raccoons, when they find a spot they like to crap on, they tend to keep coming back to the same spot over and over. She also told me she was volunteer only but had a humane solution for me. She said if I put a plastic tarp down where the raccoon was crapping in my yard he would move on to find another spot, she told me this had never failed to drive one off. So that night I took a trash bag and staked it to the ground over his de facto toilet. When I awoke the next morning I discovered he had moved alright, about 5 feet to the right of his previous spot. The rage I possessed at this point would have made The Incredible Hulk look like a small child throwing a temper tantrum.
We went to Home Depot and bought a large plastic tarp, which I ending up staking down to cover about a third of my yard. This seemed to work. After a week I took the tarp off and the next morning, another pile of shit in the same spot. Somewhere around this time I lost my mind, and went to REI and purchased a wrist rocket slingshot and some steel ammo. The war between the raccoon and I had gone way beyond personal. So it continued, night after night, putting down the plastic tarp in my yard and getting up in the morning to take it off so the sun didn’t fry the grass. I had to make sure the problem was solved soon because we were about to move and I didn’t want to leave this for the landlord.
This is when I discovered the raccoon was not afraid of me, he would come into the backyard looking for food and when I came out the back door he would head for the fence to leave, but he always paused and turned around to look. To this day I think he may have actually been taunting me a little bit. My plan was now to stun him with the sling shot so I could get close enough to finish his ass off with the sword. I was then going to hang him from the one tree in our yard as a warning to other raccoons. Like I said, I may have lost my mind.
Finally one night, shortly before we moved, I caught him coming over the fence, I had the sling shot loaded and ready and crept out the backdoor. I was only 20 feet away and I could see his beady little eyes looking back at me as if to say “I’ll be back, you got nothing”. But I had something. I put one of those steel rounds right into his ass, at that range I couldn’t miss. He went over the fence faster than anything I had ever seen move before. While I didn’t get to fulfill my dream of finishing him off, I never saw him again. We moved not long afterward so I never had to worry about him again. I was just glad I got one victory in my war with The Phantom Pooper.
