Yesterday was my sweet Petal’s birthday. We had a lovely and romantic dinner out, but sadly, the flowers that I bought for her were kind of dismal. I purchased them on a whim, up on Dupont Street at the Green Times Happy Sauce Chinese and Canadian Cuisine Go-Out Restaurant. They had a little display on the street in which they were selling flowers, a chess set and a hamster cage. Although I was offered the “three for one, very special special,” I just bought the flowers, which looked beautiful, even if they did smell a bit like chicken.
Anyway, it turns out that when I got them home, they immediately fell apart, and when Rachelle returned from work all that was left of them were a few angry looking stems that were sticking out of the vase like they were giving her The Finger. As I felt horrible about the flowers and forgetting to bring my wallet when we went out for dinner last night, I’ve been making soup all day long in order to surprise my love. Using some leftover roast beef, I’ve been creating a symphony of gustatory delight. I took a break at 2:00 so that I could watch Cops. As I like to drink a few rums when I watch Cops, I drifted off to sleep for about an hour and woke up to some weird and intimidating sounds coming from the kitchen.
I often leave the back door open so that our dog may have free reign of the yard, and have always worried that one of those people who pick through our blue boxes to collect bottles, might come in and rob us. Bravely, I yelled out, “I know Karate!” There was no response to this, just more sounds like somebody ransacking our kitchen. Using Heidi’s bed as a shield, and grabbing a golf club, I inched around into the hallway to have a look. In the middle of the kitchen, with the soup pot spilled on the floor, was a raccoon that was about the size of a Chinese gymnast.
Now, I always thought that raccoons were supposed to be nocturnal, but the garbage strike in Toronto has made them bold, and they no longer honour the hours we originally negotiated between the species. Sadly, my miniature Daschund, who is supposed to be a natural enemy of raccoons, was asleep under the covers with a bellyache, having earlier eaten a bag of jellybeans I left out by mistake. I yelled at the raccoon, but this did nothing. I banged the golf club on the floor, which did not alarm the raccoon at all, but got my downstairs neighbour to bang on his ceiling and yell, “ shut the fuck up, motherfucker!”
I threw some water at the raccoon, but this just seemed to piss it off, and it charged me, forcing me to make a strategic retreat to the front room, where I have erected a protective barrier of sofa cushions and some of Rachelle’s canvases. I am presently creating a plan of attack, where I am designing a tranquilizing system that I hope to unleash on the raccoon beast in the dead of night.