Funny Stories I shouldn't forget

Preface: I was flipping through some of my old posts & found this half-finished entry that I started in July and never posted.  So, better late than never...

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We were at dinner the other night with some family friends and our friend referenced a story we'd told several months prior.  I couldn't believe it, but I'd nearly forgotten the story entirely.  Since my memory's not exactally the best (even when I'm not pregnant), I thought I should start chronicling some of my funny stories, before they are lost forever. 

And what better place to start than with the raccoon story that Julie remembered.

About a year ago, when we were still living in our house in Ballard...
We noticed one day that the floor of our kitchen was all sticky with little paw prints scattered about.  Darcy's not the world's tidiest dog, but he doesn't exactly slobber either, so I just assumed that Ron's cat had made it's way into our house (it wouldn't be the first time).  I cleaned up the floor and moved on with life.  This continued for several days, until one night we heard a loud thumping in the middle of the night.  Being a somewhat naturally neurotic, I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things and to go back to sleep.  Until I heard Keith get up & go downstairs.  He's not the natural worrier that I am, so if he heard something, I clearly wasn't just making things up.

So, I wait, and I wait, and I wait for him to come back upstairs and tell me it was nothing.  But as the thumping continues, it's clear that it's not nothing and it isn't just going to go away.  At about this time I come to the realization that we must have a raccoon in the kitchen.  So now I'm waiting with ever-increasing visions of my battered and bloody husband coming up the stairs.

Finally, he comes back upstairs (neither battered nor bloody, thankfully) so I can hear his side of the story.  He went downstairs and the raccoon has his head & half his body sticking through the doggie door.  His face is burried in the box of dog food and he is trying to pull the box through the doggie door lengthwise (hence the thumping).  Keith turned on the light & went after the raccoon, who barely even paused in his bingeing to notice Keith's presence.

At this point, you have to understand the layout of our kitchen.  On one side of the door you have Keith, along with our kitchen, all our food, and the front-half of a raccoon.  On the other side of the door you have our garage, all our mops, brooms, the lock for the doggie door, and the back-half of a raccoon.  Getting the front-half to join the back-half could prove tricky.  Especially since the back-half was also judiciously guarding all the long-handled items one would usually use to shoo a raccoon out of your dog food.  So, Keith went after him with the only thing we had available...the ironing board.  Eventually, Keith prevailed and the racoon fled the scene of the crime, but not without dumping our garbage down the stairs and scattering trash throughout our entire garage as his revenge.

The doggie door stayed locked after that.
We later heard that the racoon had gone up our neighbor's cat ramp and ransacked their kitchen.  But even after that they still kept the cat ramp out and the window open, now that's just asking for trouble.