I'm really happy to hear that Mike has a love fest going on with the raccoon's estranged human family. Makes me feel like there are Roman candles full of potpourri going off in my heart. Cause meanwhile, I was at the Hollywood Bowl last night, sitting around in a sea of parked cars, blocked in on all sides, waiting for the people ahead of me to come back to their cars and move so I could leave. I popped open my sun roof to let some air in, and I was looking up at the stars through the canopy of trees above this part of the parking lot. And after I was done contemplating the Big Dipper, I refocused my eyes to the trees.

Coiled like an evil spring on a branch directly overhead, I saw a grey and black ball of fur -- and a flash of white teeth.

And before I could actually get the words "Holy shit" out of my mouth, I had restarted the car and mashed the 'sunroof close' button. And thank God I did. Cause there are few scarier things that I've seen in my life than a raccoon dive-bombing toward me with arms and legs outstretched in a furry X of death.

THWACK!

The raccoon hit the sunroof and left the equivalent of a chalk outline (excpet in smog grime -- hooray, LA!) on the barely-closed sunroof -- then rolled off. And while I reached under my seat to grab the Mag Lite filled with rocks that I keep under there for protection, he disappeared.

I waited in the car for another half hour til I could leave. And he didn't come back. But it's not repetition that makes me nearly shit my pants. It's kamikaze nocturnal rodents. So Mike can get all the MySpace comments he wants. I think it's a decoy. I think it's a ploy by the animal equivalent of those tornado chasers, trying to lull us into a state of comfort so that fucker can bust out of some bushes and violate some innocents.


Bottom line: keep your guard up, people.

I've been hesitant to talk about this...I don't want to be labeled a "snitch," particularly in a world where thugs walk around wearing "Stop Snitching" T-Shirts and pistol whip children who have had their lunch money stolen. However, given the recent raccoon attack, complete with helicopter-fueled police assault, I feel it is my duty as a citizen of Westwood Village, Los Angeles, California to report the following comment that was left on my MySpace page several weeks ago:

"You found [my raccoon]!? Tell him we miss him and we forgive him for what he did. We're not mad anymore, we just want him to come home."

Given the raccoon's crimes (animal rape, reckless behavior, conspiracy to commit organized crime), I don't want to drag a fellow citizen in to this mess - the jail time for "Human Accomplice to Criminal Wildlife Behavior" are steep. However, if this message is true - and that is, clearly, a big if - I think it could reveal some facets of the raccoon's personality that may just lead to its capture.

The most important question to ask is what did the raccoon do that he now must be forgiven for? Was it something as simple as pissing on the floor or upending the garbage in search of buried treasure? Or could it have been something more complex, like fornicating with a stuffed animal or bringing over too many friends for a disastrous raccoon party when his owners were gone? Maybe it just stole some jewelry...who knows. It is also interesting that this possible raccoon owner wouldn't use the raccoon's real name, instead calling it "[my raccoon]" - why would that be? It is, certainly, something we should investigate. The point being that in trying to understand the raccoon's next move, it is important to do our due diligence and first try and understand its past.

If indeed the raccoon had a human family, that could explain why he approached Loren with such timidity and longing when she saw him outside our apartment building. Perhaps he didn't just want a cigaretter - perhaps, he just wants a new family. Perhaps his attacks on Westwood are his way of lashing out at his old family, of trying to draw attention to himself in order to get help. Perhaps, the raccoon is not our enemy but our friend....

You may think you know about the helicopter from Mike's post. But you don't know the half of it.

Have you ever reached a point of sleeplessness where your body starts to play tricks on you? This physiological state and I are good buddies. We go to one another's houses for Christmas, plan vacations together, and wife-swap. Good times. If you ever want to meet my pal sustained sleep-loss, I suggest trying to write screenplays for four or five hours a night when you've got a demanding full-time job, then waking up at 9:30 on Sundays to go to the bar to watch football. Take it from the pros: it's the key to victory.

At any rate, two things tend to happen to me when I reach this state: 1) I get the shakes, which Mike and I have discussed at our other blog, www.teamfilthy.com, and 2) I begin to see major flashes of movement at the corners of my peripheral vision. This is normally not cool. It is especially not cool when you are constantly watching your back for fear that a giant dog-raping raccoon will drop out of a tree and club you over the head with a Colt 45 bottle he stole from some frat boy a couple miles away, then pee in a nearby crevice, drown you in the resulting puddle, and use your bank card to withdraw all the money from your checking account to buy fraudulent penny stocks he heard about in some spam email rather than setting up an IRA or some other sensible form of fiscal safety net.

Granted, that last part is a little outlandish -- but only if you sleep more than your average Army Ranger.

What was I talking about?

Oh, right.

Anyway, I was coming home late for reasons that wouldn't interest a raccoon, and I was just a few blocks away from my apartment, doing perfectly fine behind the wheel -- when I catch one of the aforementioned flashes of movement out of the corner of my right eye. I snap to it -- take my eyes off the road for a split second -- hear a horn and look back to see that I've drifted into the next lane.

I cut the wheel back too fast, and the car barrels into an enormous pothole I've avoided six hundred times before. And immediately after the initial ba-boom of the pothole, my car starts making a noise like there was an empty keg full of cheap firecrackers rolling around in my engine. This is the kind of thing that makes you pull over immediately and start stringing together curse words in combinations that either make no sense at all (see: 'son of a shit') or so much sense that you wonder why more people don't use them (see: 'bitchfucker').

I pop the hood of the car on the side of Kelton and start looking for anything blatantly wrong. And yes, I'm hoping that if there is anything wrong, it's completely smack-you-in-the-eyeball obvious, since I have the mechanical training of your average baby girl. And at this point, I hear the helicopter.

I look up for a minute, and it appears to be making a pretty routine fly-by. The spotlight is swinging pretty carelessly over the yuppie-urban landscape of Westwood -- and then WHAM! All of a sudden, it doubles back, sweeping wildly across a specific area, trying to focus on something.

The helicopter veers into a sharp turn, and Spotlight George tries to keep whatever it is in his sights.

And at that point, I see that taking up roughly 2/7 of the spotlight area, is the raccoon -- perched in the top of a nearby magnolia tree, hissing and pawing in the direction of the chopper with a loaf of bread in its other hand.

I freeze. The helicopter hovers. But the raccoon is on the move, cradling the loaf of bread that I'm 72% certain it jacked from Subway in its arm, trying to avoid the light. And the helicopter crew -- either having nothing important to do or just trying to stall for some other reason -- begins circling the area, trying to keep a bead on the closest thing to a sasquatch that you or I will ever see. But god damn that thing is fast.

I watched this absurd game of cat and mouse for 20 minutes while I concluded that my engine was shot, called 411 to try to get a tow truck, and eventually ended up falling asleep in a Holiday Inn Express lobby in Brentwood waiting for the nearest auto shop to open so I could find out how much it was going to cost me to repair my engine. And even though there are few things more degrading than passing out in a lobby, at least I knew that for one night, the raccoon had been held to a loaf of bread rather than the nest egg of some poor unsuspecting elderly Westwoodian who had left his window open, not anticipating that his desire to enjoy a cool late summer breeze would give a furry bandit carte blanche to pack a tree full of his hard-earned World War II medals. And I hoped that when the raccoon escaped the chopper (which I'm sure it did) he bit into that loaf of bread and discovered that it was jalapeno cheese...stale jalapeno cheese. Those would be his just desserts.

A little less than 24 hours later, and I've been unable to figure out what exactly happened last night.

What I do know is that I am still unable to reach anyone from the group in Olympia, Washington.

I also know that I am not yet ready to talk about what I found in the pond outside the apartment building after reading the letter from my Grandpa. Especially now...

...especially now that I know that my brother, animalpatrol, didn't come home last night.

It's now 3:24am on September 11th. For about the past hour, a police helicopter has been circling the area around the Helio building on Wilshire Boulevard, just north of our apartment in Westwood and just east of the Federal Building.

I have no doubt this means the raccoons have struck.

I will update as soon as I know more, but until then, I anticipate a sleepless night.

I returned home when I felt it was safe.

The picture Tim posted earlier this week should give you some indication as to why I left - the rest I'll leave to your imagination and to the recurring nightmares I will, undoubtedly, have.

When I got back to my apartment I found a letter from my Grandpa, Coke Huber, in our mailbox. It was about Raccoon Blog. Here are its contents:

August 31, 2006

Dear Mike,

Thanks for keeping your grandpa up to date on the events in Los Angeles. How's that pretty girl of yours? I hope you are keeping her safe from the raccoon. Your Dad sold me one of his old computers so I could read your stories on the internet. I will tell you that raccoons can be nasty creatures. I've shot and killed many raccoons. Do you have a gun? My friend Johnny Gonis, he had a house in Avon Lake, a beautiful house that he built mostly by himself but also with some Italians, who were really good at laying cement. Johnny, well, he's dead now but a raccoon tried to drown his dog in Lake Erie. Raccoons can drown dogs, you know, just like a man might try to drown a woman. Anyways, Johnny would've tried to shoot the raccoon but he was half in the bag and he ended up shooting a hole in his car. The weather is good here, still sunny and warm at the end of August. I hear there's a pond outside your apartment complex.

Go Browns,
Your Granpda

He's right. There is a pond outside our apartment. I'm walking out the door right now...

And If You Didn't Think They Needed to Be Stopped Before....

I have this for you.






















Mike left town for the weekend to try to drum up awareness of the raccoon scourge. If you or anyone you know is interested in aiding the cause, leave a comment on this page with your contact info.

I'm going out of town in the morning. That's all I have time to say.