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.