My raccoon family.

There’s a raccoon on the back porch eating the dog food while my dog is sleeping right next to it. Thank god she’s old and can’t hear it, I just want that raccoon to be happy.

There’s something so familiar about seeing raccoons on your back porch. I remember at my grandparents old house, they owned 5 acres of mostly forest and they would ‘feed the critters,’ as my grandma would say. When we slept over, every morning we would go out in the cold in our pajamas and the crows would be in the trees waiting and squawking and the squirrels would be in the bushes anticipating. We would throw dog food on the grass for the crows and put trail mix and dried up corn in the squirrel boxes. It was the best part of the day.

She also had a bowl of dog food out for the raccoons and, if we were lucky and quiet enough, we would get to see them when they came around. One time, a whole family stopped by. There was a mother and 5 little babies and they were so fucking cute. We crawled up to the glass door to peer out at something I had never seen, and they weren’t even scared. We were a mere 6 inches away but they just kept washing their paws in the water bowl and munching on the dog food.

One of them actually came right up to the glass and put his little paws on the glass in front of my face, we were both so curious.

Fuck that just feels like home.