…with birthday gifts that will never let me forget

This past August, while I was returning Tober, our neighbours cat, back to his house for the evening I was accosted by a trio of raccoons.

It all started one warm August evening, when I headed over to my neighbour’s house thinking that Tober was right behind me. I had left our front door wide open and Tober was sitting on the porch. I called him over and when he wouldn’t move I went into the neighbour’s house and brought out a bag of cat treats. I shook the bag, hoping that the sound would entice Tober to make his way home. I saw some movement on the lawn and because it was already dark I assumed it was the cat. Upon closer inspection, though I discovered that the moving object was a large raccoon. I wrongly assumed that the raccoon would scurry away when he saw me but he or she was quickly joined by not one but two more raccoons.

When I realized that they were all headed in my direction I opened the treat bag and threw a small handful of treats down the driveway. As they gobbled up the treats I made my way for the front door of my neighbour’s house. It only took a nano second for them to finish the few treats and they came straight up the stairs onto the porch and put their paws on the screen door. I yelled at them, kicked the front door and nothing deterred them. I was at a loss as to what I should do. I knew that if I opened the door they would come into the house and go straight to the cat’s bowl of food.

On most evenings there would be numerous people out walking their dogs before going to bed but on this particular night there wasn’t a soul in sight. What to do? I found the land line in the house and called my husband. No answer. I knew that he probably didn’t recognize the number so I tried again but the phone had been off the charging cradle for so long that it died. I tried calling out onto the street and over to our house but no one heard me.

Luckily for me the neighbour, on the north side of the house was still awake and on his computer. I opened the window and called over. He looked confused because he didn’t know where the cry was coming from. I told him where I was and he looked out his back window. I told him I was trapped in the house. At first he thought I was joking but he quickly realized that I wasn’t. In a few minutes he came over, with his 7 iron golf club. He had no intention of hurting them but he thought they would run away as soon as they saw him. They didn’t. He nudged them with his club and made a lot of noise. They were stubborn but eventually they left the porch and I was able to get out of the house. He helped me get the cat back to his house and we parted ways.

A week later it was my birthday and unbeknownst to me my husband, Kevin had told everyone about my adventure with the raccoon trio. At the party he was very anxious for me to open my presents. This in itself was unusual but I decided to humour him and started to open my gifts. The first few were lovely, thoughtful presents and then all of a sudden raccoon themed gifts started to appear. After the first raccoon gift everyone wanted me to retell the story. Little did I realize that the rest of the gifts all had a raccoon theme. It was definitely a fun birthday and one that I will not soon forget.

This week’s trio is more a story than a photo challenge but one of the cards does have a trio of raccoons on it. If you have any trios you’d like to share just copy my link and post it into your blog. I’ll check it out and leave a comment.