Killing time yesterday on our way to play Mr. and Mrs. Claus at our daughter’s day care, we impulsively swung by the old house we built in Eden Prairie in 1986.
It dredged up a lot of memories.
The gracious present owners invited the fully-costumed pair to inspect the work they had painstakingly done to our rotting retaining wall, due for replacement after 35 years. The house sits on what over-enthusiastic developers called a “canyon,” with a steep embankment overlooking a pond.
Never mind what an odd sight we made. Memories overtook:
Our close-by neighbors were always plagued by raccoons and kept everything tightly lidded. But we never had a problem with raccoons. It took years to figure out why.
Our little back yard had a tiny fenced in area where our poodle would poop. Each day, Kathleen would toss her duty over the fence and down the steep embankment.
Now mild little Hoover could never beat a raccoon in a fair fight. But the raccoons didn’t know that. Her daily scent on the embankment warned of possible deadly consequences from above.
So the raccoons just took their chances with our good neighbors instead.
