Wildlife Kingdom

I'm no stranger to wildlife. While I'm no Lewis and Clark I have seen some neat animals in my time. Most of it when I was in Boy Scouts. I've seen hawks at Hawk Mountain. I canoed right next to a beaver dam. A rattle snake crossed my path on a hiking trail in New Mexico. I peed down a hill where a baby brown bear was walking its way up on (I don't think I even took the time to zip up before getting out of there!). I snorkled next to a dolphin in the Florida Keys. I stood in the water with a school of sharks. (okay, okay, they were 2ft. long nurse sharks) A good chunk of mammals located in North America I have had the privilege of seeing in its natural habitat. (fortunately, no wolverines or grizzlies)

Since that time, I've pretty much settled into suburbia and see the occasional squirrel, rabbit and deer along with the usual gang of birds. I'm starting to think that the animals miss me and this past year the wildlife must have found me and have gotten the word out.

It started last winter when I grazed a deer with the car. It didn't do much damage and the deer seemed to have survived as it ran away into the small forest of trees 2 miles from my house. Then I had the ciggie bird build a nest and hatch a baby in my trash can. (see previous post) I also had another nest in my front door light box. I couldn't get rid of a wasp's nest as they came back twice after copious amount of poisons were applied to its nest. I have a grounhog that tresspasses in my backyard time to time, much to my dog's chagrin. Of course, I recently posted about the baby bunny massacre that said dog had committed. That brings us up to today-

Wednesday morning before I even get to work the garbage truck comes and empties our dumpster at my work. That means on Tuesday I make sure I empty all the boxes, straps, trash and such into the dumpster to get it filled in time for Wednesday morning. (the vice-president puts out the trash? HARRRUMPHH!!) We have our dumpster right up against the back wall underneath a bay door to make it easy to empty. I opened the door this morning and saw what appeared to be a dead raccoon curled up in a ball in the corner of the dumpster. Flies were swirling all about the dumpster.

"Ugh, gross!" I thought to myself, "I'd better share this with my employee Rocco."

I went up to the office to cajole Rocco out of the office to see the dead raccoon. Rocco is from South Philly, used to body build, his last name ends in a vowel, and stands under 5 foot 8 inches- I'm sure you've met the type if you've lived in this area before. Rocco is a city boy and is used to pigeons and squirrels, the prospect of seeing a raccoon wasn't very appealing to him. I had to use my executive powers of boss-dom to get him to have a look-see. I told him to look at the back corner of the dumpster and he slowly inched up towards the edge of bay door and looked back at me and said,

"Are you fuckin with me?"

I glanced at the back corner and there was no raccoon!!

"Holy shit!! It must've still been alive!" I exclaimed as Rocco gave me a look of disbelief, "I swear it was there!!" He got closer and looked down into the dumpster and saw the raccoon standing on its hind legs looking up back at him. Rocco quickly jumped back with some fear, "OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!!" He skipped away from the door.

We surmised that the raccoon had climbed its way into the dumpster but couldn't get out since it the walls were slanted inwards and too sheer. I decided to help it on its way by carefully piling the trash in the dumpster so it could use the trash to climb its way out. Rocco did help with putting in the trash but you could see how uncomfortable he was being near a live raccoon. I informed Rocco that I was naming the raccoon after him and Beatles's song, Rocky Raccoon.

After we piled the trash in, we closed the door and started to sweep around the warehouse for a few minutes. After the sweeping was done we needed to sweep the rest into the dumpster. I told Rocco to open the door, figuring that Rocky hadn't climbed its way out of the dumpster yet, and I would sweep the remaining trash out. As soon as Rocco opened the door he started to scream like a girl as Rocky was standing looking at both of us out of the dumpster and on the ledge of the bay door. He slammed the door shut.

At that point I was full of uncontrolable laughter. Watching my macho employee get scared like that was too much. Anyways- here's a pic of Rocky after he jumped down and took residence near a pile of pallets-

The poor thing was more scared than Rocco was. I just wish these animals would give a call or email before they show up at my home or work. Sheesh, who ever thought that wild animals could be so rude?!