Gang violence

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I witnessed gang violence in my neighborhood. And no, I'm not talking about gang violence of the people variety. No. What I witnessed was mother nature's gangs, if you will.

A few weeks ago, I was working on my computer (read: coming up with a undoubtedly fabulous post) and I heard a commotion in my backyard. Granted, my neighborhood is not insulated from incident, and as a single woman living alone, my awareness of noises or things out of the ordinary is heightened.

So I'm sitting at my desk, frozen. It's hard to describe the noises I heard. It didn't sound like people, but there was definitely a scuffle and some squeals--deeper toned than typical animals. Okay, yes, I'm a tad bit scaredy cat. As I sat there, I thought about my next steps. Too scared to just go to the window, I crept, and when I say crept I really mean crawled, into my kitchen. As I slowly rose to peek out the window, I saw three hefty raccoons precariously balanced on my fence.

The squealing had stopped. But the three masked bandits were certainly interested in something in my yard. It wasn't until I went upstairs and looked out of a different window where I saw a fourth raccoon happily devouring something under my holly tree. I just assumed it was something he pulled out of the garbage. It wasn't until this weekend when I finally did the yard work I've been neglecting for a month that I found out just what it was.

Note to self: Raccoons are not the cute harmless animal you may have thought. Oh, and they aren't vegetarians.

Let's just say I may have found the remains of Nutty, or maybe one of Nutty's friends. He or she was sadly, no match for the gangs in my hood.