Busy hands

The coons have been at my trash looking for the bag of chicken bones I tossed in there. When I came home from dancing, the trash can had been relocated, still upright, to the center of the grass, and part of a white plastic bag from inside had been tugged out through a small crack, and then shredded.

It's easy to forget that other creatures are unimpressed by my ownership of this property generally or the trash barrel in particular. I've seen a big mother coon with a string of kits behind saunter by me without concern or interest. They were taken however by the smells coming from the crack at the bottom of the trash can.

I can imagine those slender, agile hands reaching in delicately into the slot, poking around exploratorily, hooking the plastic and dragging it carefully out past the edges of the plastic. Perhaps those bandit eyes were looking off in the distance as this operation was being conducted. Once the bag was like an inside out pocket, the animal slashed in and got those wonderful bones (I think), all the while not tipping the barrel but instead swivel-shimmying it onto the grass.

The coon is a sometimes dangerous animal that has survivor written all over it. Its thick fur encases a large and persistent animal that doesn't give humans the respect of fear. They've sometimes snarled at me when I've surprised them at night near my garden--my? garden. Don't try to grow corn, friends say. Just when the ears are ready to harvest, the coons will do the job themselves.

The name means "the one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands." These paws or hands are remarkably sensitive, prehensile and dextrous; they must have been to do the fine surgical work they did out in my garden. We'll encounter each other more and more over the warm months, I'm sure. If we coexist, fine; if we compete, the coon very well might win. What is this smart creature doing here so close and so far away?

In that same category, I suppose I should include skunks, ants, grackles and a host of other animals, and I'm not leaving out fungi, mosses, mosses!, my spreading prickly black oak and weeds galore. In my world, I can persuade myself that I'm king, but I'm not.