The raccoon with the orange tail and other crazy shit my parents have done…

Let me preface this post with following disclaimer. My parents are seemingly normal people. They do not hate animals, nor do they use DDT based fertilizer. Unfortunately, they have a love for their landscaping that surpasses any consideration for the wildlife that ventures into their personal Giverny http://giverny.org/giverny/index.htm.

My mother smuggled tulip bulbs back from a trip they took to Holland. When she arrived back in the states, she lovingly planted these treasured bulbs in a prize spot in her garden. Days later the tulip bulbs began disappearing. Determined to humanely catch the varmint (http://www.mansgarden.com/varmints.html) who was feasting on her little piece of the Netherlands she persuaded my father to set up steel cage traps.

The day after the trap was set both mom and dad ventured to the garden to find a rather large raccoon inside the trap. My father took the raccoon (still in the cage) to nearby Darty’s farm and released it. In the days following, tulip bulbs were still disappearing and my mother (in a fit of paranoia) became convinced that the same raccoon was returning to their home from Darty’s farm, where they were being relocated. To prove my mother wrong, my dad began spray painting the tails of the captured raccoons orange before releasing them. Months later my dad ran into a friend of his (we’ll call him Cletus) that was on his way to Darty’s farm with his collection of shotguns. When asked what he was going to do there, Cletus told my father about the raccoon infestation on Darty’s farm and how some sicko had spray painted some of them orange (http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/04/03/Easterncape/abun.html).