Late Night Guest

So there really was a raccoon on my balcony the other night!

Not that there's anything unusual about that in Somerville. But I wasn't quite sure what I'd heard in the middle of the night all fuzzy-headed. I'd woken up at about 3AM and couldn't get back to sleep, so I wandered out to the balcony for a smoke. Stepping out in the near-pitch dark I heard what sounded like a large-ish animal skitter down the support beam of the balcony, in so much as a 20 or 25-pound animal can skitter.

In the morning, some of the garbage bags that were waiting for lazy me to bring them down before garbage day were ripped open. Nasty business, cleaning that up. But it wasn't until the bags went down and I had a full view of the broken monitor out there that I saw this:



See the upside-down paw print? He was a big 'un! The print is the size of a 4-year-old girl's hand. He must have been sitting on top of the monitor, reaching down to dig in a bag. Okay, Ben-Ben's "balcony after dark" evenings are over.

It's been a while since I'd last had evidence of a raccoon. But I saw a fat-bottomed skunk last week. Ah, urban wildlife.