james_davis_nicoll | Footprints (Reply)

When I left the place where I am feeding some cats to catch a bus at 6 PM, there was a thin layer of fresh snow. I noticed as I walked along that there were foot prints in the snow, fresh foot prints, clearly from a raccoon. In fact, they were so fresh that four of them still had a raccoon foot in them. The feet were connected to a raccoon that was in process of sharpening its claws on the post on someone's front porch and it looked it had been caught doing something that it was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to do. We contemplated each other for a while but decided to leave our acquaintance at that. I went to catch my bus and when I last saw it, it was strolling down the side-walk in the other direction.