Goldilocks, the Rat and the Rabid Raccoon

The knee looked like it was going to hold up. It has been popping and cracking like a Def Poetry Jam. It doesn't really hurt, but it is swollen and stiff, as if I temporarily had someone else's leg attached to mine, but the long jaunt down the mountainside from the place I sleep was beginning to loosen it up. Just about then, I saw something scuttle across the street.

No, it didn't belong to the nearby scruffy Latino gentleman who assuredly lays his head down at the stately Kingsley apartment complex up the street, or in the bed of a pickup truck outside of Home Depot. I'm not judging; I may have given the Kingsley a look had I been looking for a hovel, and certainly living a life on the lamb in a distant country continues to look enticing. But I digress. The creature walked kinda sideways, like Marty Feldman might have had he been in a Raccoon costume.

Behind those two strode a 6' tall, 120 lb. blonde damsel with the legs of Stacey Keibler. Her black jeans scissored her way down the boulevard, with a rat-sized pooch on a leash, intermittently darting ahead or falling back. With the instincts and subtlety of a coal truck idling in front of a daycare center, I yelled at the looker from across the busy, thoroughfare. “Miss, watch out for the raccoon.” She glanced over, saw the mis-colored sweat suit ensemble across the street, then just as quickly looked away. Then it registered. You could see her understand what I said, then look back to me, a little less concerned that I was a guy with a mugshot on Dateline. I pointed up the hill. The raccoon was looking directly at me, a if to say, “Really? You've broken the ice with the hottie because I'm 35 feet away on a hillside?”

She did realize that I was trying to be helpful and not, I repeat NOT, attempting a lame pickup.

[Editor's note: the storyteller assures us that he only pointed out the raccoon because the girl's legs were approximately 40-inches long. Had she looked like the girl who played in “Hairspray,” or like the local girls available on “Craigslist,” he would have quietly and inconspicuously watched as the rabid raccoon quickly and violently descended on the unsuspecting tissue-box-sized canine.]

The Latino gentleman was now within earshot. She pointed out the mangy beast that was absolutely out-of-place at 7:15 p.m. in suburbia (not me, mind you). I continued to walk, now a little ashamed because my heroics went for naught. The Latino gentleman didn't even seem interested in raccoon stew.

Goldilocks continued to race up the boulevard, faster and faster than my stubby legs. I found it interesting that she was flying at Mach speed, while I was visibly working harder at my pace. A ten-inch stride advantage will do that. She stopped for quite awhile in front of the stately Kingsley apartment complex because the tissue box decided to make a deposit. I took the opportunity to catch up. She was across the street, but I wouldn't have said anything more to her if we had been pounding the same pavement. As the great social commentator Bill Burr recently said, “In Pittsburgh, any girl with blonde hair thinks she's a 10.” Those girls bore the stiffness out of my knee.

I wasn't quite sure if she was picking up the Kingsley deposit or grinding it in for residents to slip on later. I didn't pay that much attention. A few minutes later, I'm hoofing away, the knee feels good, and she zips by with rat-pooch's paws-a-blazin'. At the intersection, we go different ways. She wings north, I south. Never to lay eyes on each other again.

I should go back later to see if the Latino gentleman and the raccoon are still around. They might like a ride to Home Depot.