Our two cats live in the garage, but when we are home during the day we often leave the back door open so they can go outside and enjoy some freedom and sunshine. At the end of such a day, I went to call them in and feed them. As I came to the food, I discovered that a package of boxed cat food had been knocked to the floor from a low shelf, torn open, and some of the contents eaten.
"Marilyn," I called. "Look. Can you account for this?"
She could not. We decided a visiting creature must have done it, but what? Not even the biggest stray cat in the neighborhood could have torn into those boxes, we thought. Could it be a rat? A few years ago we caught two rats in the screened porch.
We started keeping the back door shut whenever our cats were outside.
Several days later . . .
Marilyn got into the spa on the screened porch thinking I might join her, but I had a project on my mind -- installing a new crusher for recycling aluminum cans. It was a simple wall unit I bought for $18. I had seen one at my brother's house and had to have one of my own. But before mounting the unit, I went out to get a tool from the car.
A few minutes passed. The recent freezing weather (very un-natural in Florida) resulted in a carpet of crisp, dry leaves on our back lawn. As Marilyn lay in the spa, she heard heavy footsteps in the leaves. "How could Tim be coming from that direction without climbing over the fence?" she thought. She had heard me go out the front door, but did not hear me return.
The footsteps stopped at the corner of the house. It was dark, so Marilyn could see nothing. "Is Tim sneaking up on me?" she thought. "Surely, no one else would be in our back yard." A person could not see her clearly from the angle where the footsteps stopped, but they could if they continued around the corner. She sat lower in the water.
Suddenly the light came on in the laundry room which has a window to the screened porch. I had come in to put the can crusher on the wall. I was clearly visible to Marilyn, so obviously I was not in the back yard. At the same time, the light illuminated the porch. I could not see in the porch because it was still dark relative to the laundry room. But anyone in the yard could see the spa clearly.
Marilyn splashed across the spa for a towel and rushed into the house, but all I heard was the sliding glass door. Then she was dripping at the door of the laundry room.
"Tim. Come quick!" she said. She turned on the lights to the back yard.
There was nothing there. She briefly filled me in on the noises.
"Could it have been a cat?"
"No. They were heavy steps," she said. "Like a person."
I took a flashlight into the back yard and looked around and around. Nothing. No one was scrambling over the fence or crashing through the underbrush on the other side. No one was hiding in the shadows of the yard. It was an unsettling mystery. We turned off the yard lights.
With nothing else to pursue, I continued installing the can crusher. Before I was finished, Marilyn came back to the laundry room door. "Come quick!," she said. She took me to the sliding glass door. Something was moving in the back yard. We opened the door and heard the leaves. Big, heavy steps.
A small part of the yard was lit by a light at the back of the garage. Into the light came a raccoon -- a really big one! It walked around the flower beds and came to the back door of the garage. This was the same door we left open while the cats were out. The raccoon kept studying the closed door; I am sure it had memories of nice, easy cat food. While we watched, it came over to the screened porch. I had some experience with "tame" raccoons when I was young. I knew this critter could come right through that screen if it wished. It did not. It wandered about the yard. We watched it from various windows until it went down toward the pond and out of our view. We watched for awhile longer, but it must have gone under the fence where it stretched over the water at the corner of the pond.
Watching the raccoon was an exciting experience on a chilly Florida winter night. And two mysteries were solved. By the way, the can crusher works great!
