Food Chain.

I'm sitting outside on Friday night. Maybe midnight. Not THAT late, but everyone else in my family is tucked soundly into bed. Not me. I'm sneaking in cigarette, even though I don't smoke anymore. Yeah.

So I'm guiltily enjoying my American Spirit Yellow 'cause that brand makes smoking more worthy somehow...and I reach down to pet our new long haired cat, Lily, when I remember that the cats aren't allowed outside after dark.

ACK! It's the fucking local raccoon scout. Stupid raccoon. He's not only NOT afraid of me, he's cuddling up for a little foreplay before cleaning his grubs on our pool step. Where is your wife, what will your kids think? Do you have no shame? No decency?

Turns out the wife and kids would also like a bit of gratitude for ridding our lawn of those pesky insects. What's ten or fifteen feet of rolled up grass compared to an invasion of grubs and worms and beetles? Oh wait, the bugs are supposed to be there. I just hope there are enough to turn the soil AND feed our raccoon population.

Later, the coyotes will traverse the nighttime highway that is our backyard. They will get no "aww, how cute" from me. Outside of wasps, coyotes are the only living thing for which I harbor murderous intent. The eerie chorus of yipping from a successful hunt lives hauntingly in my mind from my years in Phoenix. I've also heard that awful sound in our own neighborhood in Pasadena. Someone's chihuahua or poodle was the reason for celebration each time here in SoCal. My own OLD cat finally succumbed to their pressure last summer..

Despite the occasional close encounter, I revel in the wildlife that has endured the onslaught of population density. Occasionally we get warnings about mountain lions or bears who have "invaded" our territory. Umm...you've got it backwards ABC7. The beautiful hawk that lives in the Deodar Cedar in our front yard? Eat all the baby bunnies you can find, heck, take a few baby raccoons or coyotes...just leave my kid's cats alone.

P.S. The nearly blind baby skunk that scavenged our front yard every nightfall last summer and was named "Opus" by my daughters, PLEASE, God or whoever, don't let that be the same squashed bloody skunk that I nearly ran over yesterday outside our driveway on the way to school...I told the girls it wasn't.