Photo credit: AndrewBrownsword

In honor of Halloween, it’s time for a spooky animal story!

One night, I pulled into my parking spot at my apartment building around 9:30 pm. It was a cold winter night, well cold for Los Angeles anyway, and I began my usual routine of gathering all my stuff. I’m one of those people who is always dragging tons of things everywhere because you never know when you might need Advil, kleenex, an extra fleece, a book to read, well you get the idea.

As I was concentrating on gathering each item from my car, which involves a delicate balancing act, I suddenly felt a presence…someone was watching me. But no one was there when I drove up, or at least I hadn’t noticed anyone.

My fight or flight instincts kicked in, my heart started pumping faster and I slowly looked up to see who was there because I didn’t want to alarm anyone with quick movements. And that’s when I made direct eye contact with…a raccoon.

Poised on the four-foot brick wall between my building and the one next door and about a car width away was a raccoon staring at me with its beady black eyes. My reaction…woah! I cautiously backed away from my car and of course called my husband to tell him to walk out and take a look. His reaction, “What? Where are you, what are you talking about?” Me, “Just walk out the front door!”

Of course by that time, I had watched the raccoon walk along the wall, then transition to the lower part of the wall and then plop onto the sidewalk and waddle across the street. I use the term waddle because the raccoon was extremely fat, he had definitely been living a successful urban lifestyle of dumpster diving.

It was an exciting and spooky encounter, being watched by a masked animal in the dark…definitely a moment that will stay with me a long time. (Of course I wasn’t able to capture this Kodak moment, so the picture of the raccoons in the tree will have to do.)