I was letting Brio out at 4:30 the other morning, and luckily I had him on the leash, because he tried to take off barking after something in the yard. I saw a dark shape go clambering up the drainpipe and onto our roof. Raccoon. (The word sends shudders into the soul of every home owner.) Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it, so I went to lie on the couch and snooze for another hour before starting my day in earnest.
As dawn began to break, I heard scratching and rattling on the roof overhead. I peeked out the window and saw the raccoon dangling by his front paws from the rain gutter, trying to get a toe-hold on the downspout with his back feet so he could get down again. I knocked lightly on the window, and he turned his head and looked at me, and then did a mighty chin-up and pulled himself back onto the roof. A moment later, his triangular head appeared over the edge of the roof directly above me, and he gazed upside down at me for a while before apparently deciding I was no threat. A moment later he lowered himself by the front paws from the rain gutter again, reaching with his toes to grab the downspout, and finally managed to grasp it. I could hear a scrabbling of claws on metal, slither slither frantic slide ping! and he was down. Hilarious! You always imagine wild creatures as perfectly adapted to their environments, graceful, adept. Not clumsy and awkward. You don't picture a flock of birds colliding with each other mid-flight, or a deer snagging his antlers on a tree while trotting through the forest. And it hadn't occurred to me that a raccoon could be quite bad at climbing. Endearing!
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