Department of Missed Opportunities

There will be No Picture at all in the blog today. This morning around 5:10 a.m. I looked at the dark sky outside and then I looked at my heavy old camera that only works half the time, and I thought "Who needs more pictures of the pitch black park?" and left it on the counter.

Just past the dog beach I saw a creature the size of a cat run across the path about 20 yards in front of us. The dogs raced towards it, but it climbed up the fence and shimmied up the lamp on the other side. There at the cross-bar of the lamp, with the light full on its face, was a baby raccoon! Henry and Simone were on their hind legs trying to climb the fence but luckily the raccoon was safe on its perch. It would have made a wonderful picture, but you will just have to imagine the tiny hands wrapped around the post, the luxurious dangling tail, and the little pointed face with its ringed eyes peering down at us in the lamplight.

I harbor no illusions about raccoons and know how fortunate we were to avoid a physical encounter. A Brooklyn husky I know ended up with a wound on its haunch the size of a saucer when it tried to attack a raccoon in its back yard. And I once observed a fight between a raccoon and a possum on the porch of a place I used to visit in the Berkshires. That wasn't pretty either. It's wild out here in Brooklyn! East Yorkshire has nothing like this.