As I said, Jeff
had the touch, so in our new plan, he would take over the skinning.
And to stop the
gagging, he’d wear a mask, and suck on a peppermint, and breath through his
mouth.
The plan also
included powering up a couple fans directed to blow fresh air over his
shoulders past him first, then on over the raccoon, and off into the yard
beyond.
And Barry would
stand on one side, also in a mask with a peppermint, and with a can of air
freshener in one hand, and a fly swatter in the other.
And I would
stand on the other side, equipped equally well.
And while I
don’t remember it as part of the plan, apparently Mr Peck was to sit on his
back porch, with his own air freshener, his cool drink, his pipe, and collapse
in a fit of laughter while watching us struggle to keep what was left of our
lunches.
Barry and I
stood there, trying not to throw up inside of our masks, spraying freshener
liberally, swatting flies continually, and boiling in the sun.
Jeff gave it his
best effort.
But it simply
wasn’t to be. There would be no raccoon
proudly mounted in our basement.
It became all
too apparent that that raccoon had baked to a medium rare or better sitting in
that metal culvert in the 110 degree heat.
And what heat and decomposing fluids do to skin is just beyond
description.
The skin just
wouldn’t hold together.
And it was
coming up on time that Mom and Dad would be getting home. And since we weren’t going to have a nice
pelt to show off, we figured we had better give it up and clean up.
There was no way
that tossing the thing in the trash can was going to work. We knew that while the lid might cover the
critter, it wasn’t going to cover the smell.
We’d read that the
Indians always cremated their dead.
Seemed they believed that it helped the spirit find its way into the
afterlife. But we didn’t have the wood
or the time, so we settled for the white man’s plan.
Being fairly
handy with shovels, we figured we’d bury it.
Never had we
punched a hole quite as fast as that afternoon.
Never had we
gone so deep.
We were just
tamping the last of the dirt back in place when we heard the car pull into the
drive and figured that if Mr Peck didn’t narc on us, we might just get lucky
and get away with it; so we strolled innocently into the house from the back as
Mom and Dad entered from the front.
Did you know
that after a time when subjected to strong odors your sense of smell goes stops
working?
Apparently it’s
true.
Cause Mom didn’t
even get in to the same room as us before she was demanding to know what had
died, and where it was.
And I know it
couldn’t have been Mr Peck, cause there were no car phones or cell phones back then. And he'd still been sitting on his porch wiping tears from his eyes when we went in the house.
I did learn one
thing form that experience though.
Them Indians had
it right.
I swear you
could smell that raccoon in the back yard for 3 or 4 weeks before its spirit
finally left us.
Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen - A
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