Mike was right: I did think he was full of shit. This is mostly because Mike has a history of tall tales involving goats at truck stops and squids being bombed by helicopters in the Pacific Ocean. If my dad was here, he'd back me up on this. Then my mom would probably bake someone some cookies.

Anyhow, the Saturday after Mike started running his mouth about this enormous hypothetical raccoon, I went out with a friend of mine for an innocent Saturday night of sushi and Kirin Ichiban. The LA Film Festival was going on, which I remember particularly well because we went to eat at a restaurant near enough to the hang-out of a hobo so belligerent and crazy that he probably deserves his own blog (www.belligerentbum.blogspot.com coming soon), and it was clear that for the rest of the week, he had been relocated so he didn't bite some hipster film geek in the pulmonary artery.

So the night's winding down. My friend is ready to drive herself back home when she discovers that she left the key to her Club back at her house. So after nearly throwing up out of sheer embarrassment, she swallows her pride enough to allow me to drive her back to Venice to get the Club key, run her back to Westwood to pick up her car, and then go home. Mind you, I've had a really rough week, and I'm tired as shit, and the last thing I really want to be doing is driving to Venice at 1 AM. But I'm a saint.

Fast forward to 2 AM. I've just dropped my friend at her car and waited to make sure that she's good (side note: it would've been hysterical if her car would've gotten stolen in the mean time). I'm practically ready to pass out at the wheel. I'm circling the block to get back to my garage when I get locked up at a stop light on Veteran and Ohio. It's one of those situations where you're just sitting at the light, you're the only fucking person on the road, and you're like, "This is stupid. I'm sitting at this light, and I'm the only fucking person on the road."

And just as I'm about to bust a highly illegal, completely renegade, ultra bad-ass left turn -- something catches my eye out of the left side of the windshield.

Like a championship fighter entering the ring to a standing ovation, a raccoon roughly the size of your average suitcase bounds across the street ten yards from my car. He makes no effort to stay out of the range of my headlights. He makes no effort to speed up once he knows that I've seen him. No, he takes his time. And I watch, frozen at a green light, as he casually makes his way across the tree lawn and directly up the back staircase of some unsuspecting apartment building -- probably getting ready to rob them of all of their gold.

Now you may ask yourself, "Tim, I thought raccoons just ate garbage and whatnot. Why would a raccoon steal gold from an apartment building?"

If that's your thought process, and you live in the LA area, here's a tip for you: find a better place to hide your gold. Cause I'm not saying that the racoon necessarily wants your gold. But if he does, I'll tell you this: he's taking it.

Holy shit. Mike was telling the truth. There's a monster in the neighborhood.