It was late spring. Or summer. I don't know. I know it was definitely early evening and my two sisters and I and our Dad were walking along the railroad tracks on our way home from an early evening walk. We literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Whistler.
Anyway, one of us looked behind us and noticed we were being followed.
It was a raccoon. He was teeny tiny. And he was alone.
We'd been warned about raccoons (and bears and cougars. They were regulars in our backyards growing up. It's why we had a lot of cats go missing) so Dad told us to go on ahead and he would scare it away.
My sisters and I plodded up the path to home and I'm not sure how long it was before Dad came through the door and we all ran up to him to ask him what happened.
What happened was that Dad had the raccoon in his arms. He'd brought the little thing home.
Naturally we were all very curious and pokey. Turns out the little dude was blind and possibly abandoned because of it? Dad set up a little spot for him outside if he wanted to leave overnight. But come morning little Rocky, as we came to know him, was still in his makeshift home. It looked like we had ourselves a new pet!
None of us remember much more than this, honestly. We don't even have a picture of him to prove this happened. I don't know what Buffy the dog thought of Rocky, or what Mom thought of him, or what we fed him, but what I do know for sure is how Rocky felt about Dad. Rocky fell in love with Dad. He liked his scratchy beard so much he'd perch on Dads shoulder and just rub his little snout in it. He peed on Dad a bunch while doing this which we all thought was hilarious. I'm pretty sure Dad was smitten with Rocky too. This was a bromance in the making.
I doubt we were allowed to hold Rocky or anything. On account of the rabies. But he was pretty darn cute nonetheless. He stayed with us for that late spring or summer, again no one is quite sure how long he was with us, until one day my sisters and I woke up and Rocky was gone. Dad told us he'd gone to the raccoon farm.
Right.
It was only just a couple years ago Ashley realized there wasn't an actual raccoon farm. We told her what we thought we knew happened- we assumed Dad had...dealt with it. We didn't think any less of him for it or anything, we just accepted it and moved on.
I just talked to my father, to try and nail down some details, and he maintains to this day, there wasn't an actual 'raccoon farm' where raccoons frolic and scavenge merrily through well placed garbage cans, but that it was someone named Eugene Rickle and he had a wildlife preservation something or other in the Interior of BC and that's where Rocky went.
Well, if I've googled correctly, and that's the farm, the website has a photo of a cougar on the front, so RIP Rocky, RIP indeed.
We don't remember much about you, but we know you were there. And you peed a bunch.
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| Not Rocky, but a dude who scampers through my backyard every day at 3pm. VERY punctual. |
