WOO HOO! I've had a sign from above that the planets are all realigned and my normal crazy life is back. No, it wasn't a shooting star, or a rainbow, or word that the insurance companies are taking our $7700.01 into account on the payout on the truck, no no no. It was a dead raccoon. Yes. Dead. Raccoon.
We were driving out to one of the boys' basketball games. Jeff noticed a rather large dead raccoon on the side of the road. Joey commented on how he could make himself a hat from that, right? I said "theoretically you could" and Jeff said "YES!" We were running late so he drove on by. I figured that was the end of things.
Later that night, as we were driving along, Jeff saw the raccoon again. He decided we NEEDED that dead raccoon. We're in my mother's borrowed car, so I said NO WAY ON THIS FROZEN EARTH are you putting that dead animal in my mom's car. He'd already screwed with the radio buttons AND the rear view mirror and my mom's a bit picky about those things. I figured the woman wouldn't appreciate having parts of dead animal left in there and since she's being kind enough to let us use her car through our truck mishaps, NO WAY HOSAY. I suggested he drive home, get a trash bag, etc. OH NO. Not Mr. TreasureGoddess...
SO, he drug the critter to the car, rolled down his window, and proceeded to drive through our neighborhood with his arm out the window holding up this MONSTER sized raccoon. (It must've weighed at least 40 lbs). Oh momma, if I could have had my camera with me......it's face was frozen on this fierce expression with its teeth barred RIGHT THERE IN THE WINDOW while Jeff's face looked pretty much the same trying to hold up this critter by a leg out the window while driving. I tell you, I almost wet myself I was laughing so hard. Joey tried to capture the moment on his phone's camera once we got it home. (above)
He tossed the dead critter into the kids' dug out igloo for a while, then got himself set up to skin the thing. UGH! Joey decided he really didn't want to work on the hat until the skin resembled more of a fur without the innerds attached, so he bailed. He also decided he was pretty much done hanging out in the igloo. I came down to check on the man once in a while and got nails & hammer & extra blades, etc then got out of the way.
My daughter (13 yrs old and highly dramatic) was out with some girlfriends at a movie. I hear this load of screams coming from the garage...turns out she'd walked up just as Jeff sliced something inside the raccoon that caused a lot of blood and gore (turns out if you're skinning something it's not supposed to have hardly any blood--strange fact) and all the girls were freaking out. The dad that was driving came up and the men discussed various manly things like knives and critters and the like. It was quite the social event in our garage/driveway.
Now I will say I had to verify that the body made it to the trash (you never know about Mr. TG, he was talking about how there was a lot of good meat there.....). I have nothing against eating game that's been hunted. I have not yet crossed the line to roadkill. Let's just all be glad that I had the reserve NOT to photograph what's now drying in our garage. I assumed you pinned out the furs/skins with the pretty side out. Nope. Apparently there's more scraping/rubbing/working it to be done first.
Our garage smells like a meat processing plant. A small price to pay for a sign that for me, at least, life is back to normal.
Now I can get back to knitting in peace.
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