Ricky, Rocky and the Three Racketeers
a chapter from All Our Friends: Simple Rewards of Simple Living
All Our Friends: Simple Rewards of Simple Living begins with a couple’s choice to quit their jobs and take up a life of voluntary simplicity. When they buy a rustic property on Mayne Island, one of B.C.’s Southern Gulf Islands, they find themselves sharing their yard with an extended family of raccoons.
While exploring the adjustments the couple must make to the limitations of a travel trailer and a fixed income, All Our Friends follows their relationship with an entertaining cast of raccoons as they move from the background into the foreground of their lives.
By letting the reader in on the challenges and rewards of simple living in an island setting, of which close contact with wildlife is the ultimate reward, All Our Friends is an experience few are ever lucky to have.
Chapter 4 Ricky, Rocky and the Three Racketeers
With the bulk of our yard work behind us and only a few touch-up painting projects scheduled for inside the trailer, we were free to relish our first jobless summer. While we were employed, we never joined the masses in their summer exodus southward, and preferred to stay around home and hike in the country on the weekends. Of course there were no beer gardens or country inns to hike to on Mayne Island like there were in the countryside surrounding Nuremberg, but there were bays, beaches and parks to explore. Our greatest luxury was that we could go where we wanted when we felt like it and stay as long as we cared.
On the night of the summer solstice we returned home from a picnic party to the serendipitous smells and sounds of the season. For a few minutes we lingered under the stars and listened to night’s lullaby when a warbling we could not associate with any bird or creature issued from the upper woods. Figuring we would have the opportunity to identify it another time, we turned in.
A couple of weeks later we were sitting outside after supper when we heard that same warbling accompanied by some rustling in our neighbour’s woods. I stood up just in time to spot a small masked face peering through the deer fence. We held our breaths while the mother, we hoped, climbed into our yard, but we had to wait another week before Raggedy Ann suddenly appeared on Bandit’s big cedar log with a kitten-sized baby behind her. She seemed about to come down to the garden stage when a frantic cooing in the woods turned into a high-pitched shrieking, and in a flash she took off with her kit scurrying behind her.
A few days later while we were doing the supper dishes, a loud chorus of cooing announced activity again on the big cedar log. Lined up side by side this time were three raccoon babies! Immediately we slipped out of the trailer and slid onto the bench outside the door. The three kits continued to wail and sing while Raggedy Ann, we assumed, checked to see if the coast was clear. When Putzi appeared at the top of the stone steps, we had the explanation to her recent appetite and aggressive behaviour toward Foxy! When Putzi whistled, all three kits slid, tumbled and bounced down the steep stone steps to the garden stage where they huddled tightly around their mother.
Now, cute may be a word that is scorned in literary circles and over-used in colloquial language, but I can think of no better one for baby raccoons with their spiky ringed tails, shoe button eyes, and blunt noses with the smudge of a mask that makes them look as if they’ve been playing make-up artist with Dad’s shoe cream. Breathlessly we watched their investigations for awhile, then wondered if a tasty treat might encourage their mother to let us enjoy them for a little longer. We hated to risk scaring them off, but my husband took a chance and glided towards them with a dish of food.
At first the three kits scooted for cover and dived into the salal, but at Putzi’s signal they emerged and collected around her. The dog food, like the stone steps, was almost too big for them to handle, and the two larger kits succeeded in spitting out more than they could chew or swallow. All three showed keen interest in the Rubbermaid water container my husband had set out recently on the garden stage. After hoisting themselves up onto the rim of the container like children climbing monkey bars, they see-sawed and dipped their noses into the water, which they drank as it dripped into their mouths. Their visit had made our day, and we could hardly wait for the next one.
One beautiful Saturday afternoon in early August, that my husband and I fondly remember as Big Baby Day, we happened to be sitting front row centre in a shady spot under the big-leaf maple tree near the garden stage when Putzi appeared with her family. I was not sure how Putzi would react to our being so close, but she looked straight at us and only growled. Her warning was not intended to threaten us, as we soon came to understand, but to keep her babies in line. This time they stayed for over an hour, and my husband was able to take our first baby pictures.
We found it odd that Putzi, our most recent and reserved customer, should be the first to entrust us with her young. From Raggedy’s earlier appearance on the cedar log with a kit, we knew that she had young ones, and when she stood up, she was clearly lactating. It was so unlike our audacious Raggedy to keep her babies a secret when there was little, if anything, in the way of desires that she ever hid from us. In any case she proved herself much better at extorting us with her mischief than we were at bribing her with food to bring her young.
That same Saturday Raggedy Ann must have realized that Putzi was upstaging her because shortly after Putzi left with her young, Raggedy paraded across the garden stage with twins. Her two were a size smaller and probably two or three weeks younger than Putzi’s three. Timidly they tagged after their mother, who came straight up to us and demanded the reward we had promised her for delivering the goods. The twins were too small to be interested in dog food, but like their cousins they tested the water in the Rubbermaid container with their button noses, and played or snooped around the garden stage until Raggedy led them away.
While continuing to slip out in the morning for a quick breakfast on her own, Putzi honoured us with her young only sporadically at first. When my husband approached the garden stage with a family-sized helping of food, the three kits would flee up the steps, scatter into the salal or head up a tree, their favourite refuge, until they learned, and it didn’t take long, that the Crunchy Man was not to be feared.
From Joan Ward-Harris’s descriptions of her Vixen’s three babies in Creature Comforts, I guessed Putzi’s babies to be two females and a male and named them Molly, Dolly and Bugsy, the Three Racketeers. Bugsy, the smallest, was not as greedy or pushy as his two sisters, and he preferred to retreat to the steps and gnaw on his food in private. Molly, a miniature replica of Putzi, was scrappier than easy-going Dolly, and she crouched on the garden stage and growled whenever mother or sibling came near her pile of goodies.
When they were not busy eating, the Racketeers investigated the garden, pulled on the bright red star-shaped nicotiana flowers and let them bounce back up, or grappled with the ice plants as if they were knots that had to be untied. They stuck their hands into the various cracks and crevices between the stones and rocks to fish for goodies, turned over an assortment of sea shells to check out the underside, and peeked into the empty flower pots sitting on one of the stone steps. I was always expecting one of them to fall headfirst into a pot, or topple over with it, but none ever did, a fact which was probably due more to luck than skill.
Putzi carried out the duties of a single mom with thorough dedication. We could imagine that before she took her kits out she made sure that their hair was combed, their faces washed, their shoes shined and their shirts tucked in because they always looked and behaved like three little angels on their way to Sunday school. The only bad marks they would have received on their report cards would have been for their table manners, which they came by honestly.
Mealtimes were a free-for-all. Everyone stepped on whoever squatted in the way, and no one was the least apologetic when he or she happened to back up into the other one’s face. Usually the Racketeers gathered around Putzi in a furry clump, and when one wanted to move, the best available route was over bodies. Their favourite way to secure their share of food was to sit on it. No matter how much they had under them or in front, they invariably reached over to sample someone else’s serving. Growling at each other came naturally, and they had no compunction about growling at their mother, who growled right back.
With their active schedule, the Racketeers kept their mother going full tilt. Sometimes Putzi would remove herself to the side of the garden stage and space out while Molly, Dolly and Bugsy squabbled over their breakfast. A few times her head bobbed like a weary worker’s on the bus ride home, and her body sagged and slumped until she came within millimeters of keeling over. The only break Putzi seemed to get before she led the Racketeers off on their excursions was when Molly held up the crew to finish the last crumbs or take one more drink.
Raggedy did not bring the twins very often at first because toddlers cramped her style. As my husband later discovered on one of his hikes up to the top of the talus slope, she had her den conveniently located in the woods right above our yard so that when the twins were napping she could easily slip down for snacks.
Having made our place her home away from home, Raggedy was in and out all the time. As summer heated up, she came around for extended stays, and she liked to stand in the water container and cool off, especially after we exchanged it for a larger one that made a handy paddling pool. Occasionally she would lounge on a cool, flat rock and show more interest in what we were doing than in what her babies might be up to.
It would be unkind of me to suggest that just because she didn’t seem to take Ricky and Rocky very far from home she was a lazy or negligent mother. In any case, her methods were consistent with her personality, and taking full advantage of her maternal status, she begged and bugged until we succumbed and handed out another treat.
When Raggedy brought Ricky and Rocky, they would often hide under the trailer or in the front garden, or play between the driftwood and the cedar hedge that screened our trailer from the street. When they felt neglected, they would coo loudly. With a low growl Raggedy would instruct the twins to stay where they were while she took off after my husband and followed him to the shed. At all times babies took a back seat to food!
Into late August Ricky and Rocky accompanied Raggedy on a steady basis. Rocky was a feisty vixen who was developing into a clone of her mother. At mealtimes she sat on the biggest pile of food and, crouching close to the ground, she growled and lunged with the tenacity of a tiger at any animal that came too close. If by chance she ran out of food first, she stole from her mother.
Ricky, who was a half-size smaller than Rocky, tended to be a little dreamer. Very early he gave the impression of a raccoon angel who didn’t really belong to the wild world he’d been born into. He was forever lingering in the woods or wandering off alone, and would resort to loud cooing to attract attention. Most of the time Raggedy carried on eating or harassing the other guests who happened to be in the yard, and let Ricky cry until the call became a desperate wailing that even the coolest mother could not ignore.
Despite the twin’s distinct personalities, they were their own best playmates. If we could not watch them, as we did one day when they spent most of the afternoon in the yard romping and frolicking with each other like kittens, we could often hear them cackling, cooing and chortling in the woods behind our place.
If Bandit happened to be around (and he did not let all this activity go unnoticed), we had to chase him off with the garden hose so that he couldn’t intimidate the babies. Of course he didn’t appreciate this sort of treatment, but Bandit didn’t let our interventions get in the way of what he wanted, even if it meant that he had to come back later.
Bringing up the next generation fell entirely upon Putzi and Raggedy. When it came to child support, Bandit was a deadbeat Dad who regarded his offspring with hostility and annoyance. He never harmed the little ones, but went out of his way to show them his least accommodating side. They, in turn, regarded him with suspicion and deference, and their mothers made sure they stayed out of his way.
Raggedy’s casual methods of childrearing suggested that she was the more experienced mother. Confident of her ability to strike like a B-52 bomber, she defended her portion of food more vigorously than she kept track of poor Ricky who was apt to linger in the woods or wander off by himself. When both families happened to be around at the same time and Ricky started wailing, it was Putzi who raised her head and rushed over until she realized that the cry-baby did not belong to her.
Keeping curious young raccoons in line required a mother’s constant communication. Putzi and Raggedy delivered their warnings and instructions in a language which ranged from growling, whistling, whimpering to cooing. In response the kits cooed, warbled, chortled and trilled, producing an amazing repertoire of expressions. In addition to using their voices, their mothers’ versatile hands were quick to hold their kits back or to steer them in the right direction.
When it came to discipline, our raccoon mothers were no push-overs. One sunny afternoon Raggedy was relaxing in the water container we now called their pool while the twins were climbing in and out, or snooping for crumbs on the garden stage. As precocious as her mother, Rocky was making a nuisance of herself when Raggedy reached over the side of the pool and gave her a good swat. Neither Raggedy nor Putzi had to resort to corporal punishment often, but when necessary, they wasted no time.
It was to Putzi’s credit that the Racketeers travelled as such a tight unit. The affection with which mother and kits related to each other was touching indeed. Bugsy in particular stayed close to Putzi, and while Molly and Dolly were busy climbing the trees near the big cedar log after breakfast, Putzi would vigorously clean him. A few times I caught sight of Bugsy reaching up and touching Putzi’s nose, as if to give her a kiss. An egalitarian mother, she always gave the girls a thorough grooming when they came back down from the trees.
Tree climbing lessons were a riot, especially when at first the kits were not able to come down as quickly as they could go up. Instead of descending headfirst, they would slide downwards until it was safe to turn around and jump off. Soon, however, they mastered the art of climbing down headfirst, and they graduated from fir and cedar trees to the trickier arbutus near the stone steps. For a short time the shingled roof of our cedar storage shed served as a testing ground for their climbing skills, and we could hear them skittering around on top when we went in to get something.
Our big arbutus tree proved the ideal place for fun, especially when all three Racketeers were up there at once. It didn’t take them long to discover the plastic rope that my husband had attached to support a long drooping branch on the big leaf maple below. After watching the whole branch wave and shake in the air one morning as if caught in a fierce windstorm, I walked over to discover one little masked bandit up in the crotch of the tree, holding the rope in his teeth and having a furious tug-of-war.
Our young raccoons were learning quickly, and as skilled imitators they’d taken to accompanying their mothers on their race with my husband to the shed. Given the right opportunity they’d all have been in there like dirty shirts. Therefore we always kept our shed closed and padlocked when we went away.
On the whole our five raccoon babies were well-behaved. Their worst misdemeanour was digging in the lawn, or racing through the flowers and herbs. If they knocked something over, dug a hole in the grass or roughed up a plant, we could never be angry for long at those masked innocents peeking out of the undergrowth. More of a game than any earnest attempt to control their inclinations, our scolding resulted in their scrambling up a tree, ducking behind a log or diving into the salal.
With the exception of the lawn into which we’d put a lot of energy, we weren’t growing anything in our garden that the Racketeers or the twins could destroy. And if a few plants fell victim to their play, well, the rare experience we knew we were fortunate to have more than made up for any losses.
All Our Friends: Simple Rewards of Simple Living can be ordered at: Trafford Publishing
Enjoyed this very much. I occasionally get racoons in my back yard but have never gotten to enjoy their antics like you have.