by Clea Simon
“Hey, Albert.” I swung into the shelter office with a sense of purpose. I wanted to get the raccoon and get out. Not only was Albert a possible hindrance, but the fact that Jim Creighton might be around—the police station was right next door—was another complication I’d rather avoid.
“Pru! Glad you’re here.” Albert started to get up from behind his desk, and I sped up. But even though the whiskered man wasn’t built for speed, he had the edge on me: the door to the cage area was pretty much right behind his desk. I stopped and waited, arms crossed.
“Yes?” I’d already started tapping one toe. With a specimen like Albert, there’s no point to subtlety.
“Were you, uh, going back to see Rocky?”
I cocked my head, wondering if there were any new developments. “You have any other animal back there?”
“No, Pru.” He turned back toward his desk and started to shuffle through some papers. “But something came in. Wait, here it is!”
He turned toward me, holding out a piece of stationery. I reached for it, expecting some state update, maybe on rabies or nuisance animal removal. As soon as I saw the letterhead in that too-bright green—“Evergreen Hills: Your Home in the Pines”—I knew this was worse. Sure enough, it was from Jerry Gaffney. In his position as property manager of Evergreen Hills, he was following up with the request for a rabies test on the animal removed from the premises. For the safety of the homeowners, the legal counsel of Evergreen Hills was insisting…blah, blah, blah. It took two paragraphs to get to the point: they wanted that raccoon dead, and they wanted proof.
“When did this come in?” I admit, I crumpled the letter a little bit as I gestured with it. Albert’s filing system left something to be desired, and his trash can would be an easy shot. He looked down and muttered something as he shuffled. “Did you read it, Albert?”
“I had to.” His fumbling produced an envelope with something green stuck to it. “It was one of those special deliveries. They made me sign.”
“Great.” I took the envelope, and looked at it. Registered mail, addressed to Albert in his role as Animal Control Officer, Town of Beauville. I tossed it back on the desk and pulled up the guest chair. We’d had the raccoon in here for four days. If he were a dog, we could simply observe him for another six and let him go. Rabies shows up within ten days in domestic animals. Probably in raccoons, too, but there was no proof of that. The research hadn’t been done, probably because nobody had bothered to spend the money on it. Raccoons were just pests. Nuisance animals, easier to kill than to get to know. Unless I could come up with something, the raccoon was screwed.
“It’s what we’re supposed to do anyway.” Albert didn’t dare look me in the eye, and for a moment, I was glad. It would have been easy to acquiesce. To just do it. Outside, the rain had started again, and I could hear it pound down on the roof, the perfect accompaniment to my mood.
“Up, up! Dry branch, dry.”
“Excuse me?” I turned toward Albert, who blinked back.
“Up on the branch. Climb! ” There was an urgency to the voice. “Up! ”
“Sorry.” I shook my head. This wasn’t a human reaction to rain. “Did you bring Frank in today?”
“Nuh uh. He didn’t want to leave his cage.” Albert shook his head. Of course not. Why would a sensible animal want to leave a safe place on a stormy day? A sensible animal who had a steady supply of food, and probably a good cache of purloined treats as well. Which made me wonder if there was another reason for the pressing need in that voice.
“Albert, did you feed the raccoon today?” That voice was coming from somewhere.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Sure did.”
The double, no triple, assurance was what did it. “No, you didn’t.” As much as I didn’t want to see the doomed animal, I would be damned if he’d go hungry. Albert didn’t dare contradict me as I went for the door to the cage room.
I opened it in time to hear a soft thud, and a grunt of what might have been frustration.
“Hello?” Turning on the light, I tried to mentally apologize. Raccoons have excellent night vision, but I needed to find the kibble. I needn’t have worried. As I approached the cage, I saw the lithe animal scrambling at the far wall. It wasn’t hunger bothering the young animal, though. As the young male turned—I got a distinct sense of anxiety—I saw he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was peering at the far end of the cage, really a pen on the cement floor, which had a small puddle in it.
“Great.” I looked around, hoping to see an incompletely closed window. No such luck. The leak seemed to be welling up slowly from the base of the wall. I did some quick calculations: this was an external wall, so it wasn’t likely that the water came from a pipe. No, it seemed that our new shelter, which shared a space with Creighton’s office, was as permeable as a sieve.
“Up! Up! ” I turned from the small puddle, which was already growing visibly against the painted cement floor, to the panicked animal pacing by it. “Up! ” Animals understand floods. They know about rain and rising water. This raccoon wanted to climb, as high as he could, to find a safe place to sleep. Except that the bars of his cage didn’t allow for much of a foothold, and even his dexterous little pads couldn’t grip anything that would hold him above the cold, increasingly damp floor.
“Hang on.” I looked around me for something, anything, the raccoon would climb on. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be what he wanted: a tree with some good, yawning branches that would allow him to get safely above ground. Anything, though, would be better than nothing.
Then I saw it: a pile of packing cases, doubtless left to rot once whatever was inside had been removed. Heavy cardboard, they would melt into mush if the water reached it. But maybe, if the rain stopped, the leak would recede. I found myself cursing the town under my breath. Beauville, its shoddy workmanship, and its deference to yuppies. All of them played into my creative invective as I carried two of the boxes over to the raccoon’s pen. Randolph would have been proud of me, I thought, as I unlatched the pen door and pushed in first one, and then the other, reaching to toss the smaller one on top to roughly approximate a rocky hillside.
It wasn’t an immediate success. The raccoon drew back, frightened by the movement, and as he neared the puddle, I saw him recoil further. He wasn’t that big to begin with and the stress was clearly taking its toll. Already, I thought, his fur had lost some of its luster.
“You need some dinner.” I remembered my initial reason for being there and, gate latched, went to find the kibble. I overfilled the bowl, unsure when I’d get back next and slid it into the enclosure, waiting. A healthy animal, a hungry one, he should have caught the smell right away. I held my breath, wondering how he’d acknowledge the food: would it be “grubs”? “Eggs”? Instead, I got nothing. The scared beast simply shrank back further, his tail nearly in the puddle.
“Come on, guy, you’ve got to eat.” I found my own stomach tensing up. “Hungry?”
This is what I hate about wildlife rehab. Too often, it doesn’t work. Whatever we think of them, wild animals are actually more fragile than we know. Fear, anxiety—any of these things can keep an animal from ignoring its own survival instincts. My presence—that water—could be viewed as enough of a threat that the raccoon would starve, rather than eat. In my first practicum, doing emergency work with raptors that had misjudged skyscrapers and electric wires, I’d seen birds drop dead of heart failure, die of pure fear. All of us had.
“Kibble….” I did what I could. I tried to conjure up images of fat and juicy beetles, of acorns, half-rotted and fragrant. Of a clutch of robin’s eggs—and then of the young birds themselves. Nothing. The raccoon was staring at me, and I could sense his heart beating faster.
Images were getting me nowhere. Scent, that was key. If I could get the young male close to the dish, then maybe the smell of the kibble would trigger his hunger. But how? He was wedged so far against the far side that I could almost feel the bars pressing through his fur. I
knew Albert would have an answer. Over in the corner, propped up against the wall, was the long-handled net that he’d probably used to capture the animal.
I couldn’t see poking him. He was already so freaked out. Instead, I slowly opened the door. Crouching down low, so as to be as unintimidating as possible, I began to push the bowl closer. “Come on,” I kept my voice low, just a gentle, reassuring sound. “Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to eat?”
I knew he wouldn’t speak English. He was a raccoon, not Wallis. But if I could just conjure up the emotions, the intent of my words, maybe something would come through. Something would spur him on. I crawled into the pen, pushed the bowl toward him. Tried to visualize a nest of eggs, the sweet, juicy taste of something fresh and warm. Biting down. Tasting. I pushed the bowl a bit closer.
“No! No! NO! ”
“Ow!” I jerked back so fast, I hit the opened door behind me. Suddenly, we were one: the feeling of cage, of trapped. Of sheer panic like lightning between us. Only as it faded, I realized who I was—and what had happened.
Scurrying out of the cage, I locked it behind me, and stepped under the light to examine my hand. It was bleeding, blood welling out of a small puncture wound at the base of my thumb. I had gone too far. In my effort to reach the raccoon with my own particular gift, I had forgotten the basic training of my profession. A wild animal is just that: wild. And a wild animal, when cornered, will strike out, no matter how kind your intentions may be.
“I’m sorry.” I was talking to the raccoon now, even as I washed my hand in the utility sink. “I really am.” I pressed a clean paper towel to the wound, which was starting to throb—along with my conscience. I’d not only gotten too close, I’d thought about eating, about biting—any message that had gotten through might have been that I was the predator. That I was looking for some smaller animal to eat.
This was my fault, entirely, and yet what I had just done had sealed the poor creature’s fate. Before, the raccoon had simply been a nuisance animal, the request for a rabies test just a mean-spirited attempt to assert human control over what had once been a wild environment. But now the raccoon had bitten someone—bitten me—and the prescribed regimen was clear. He would have to be tested for rabies now. Killed, and his head sent to the state lab. Or else I would have to get the painful series of shots that were the only way to prevent the disease from dragging me down.
“I’m just—I’m so sorry.” I forced myself to look at the beast who was both my attacker and the innocent victim of my own foolishness. At the far end of the cage, he looked up at me. For a moment, we held each other’s gaze as he brought his paws together. Those amazingly agile little hands clasped each other, and I could almost believe that he was feeling my pain, recognizing my hand as something like his. In his eyes, beyond the fear, was something else—something sad and lost.
“Hurt? ” It was just a flash, a memory of a littermate taken, or a parent killed. I just nodded. And then, to my surprise, the raccoon began to eat.
My own sigh surprised me. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. But as I watched the bear-like creature hunch over the bowl of kibble, I relaxed. Picking at the pieces, one by one, he examined them, and then as his hunger kicked in, he began to gorge, sticking his snout deep into the bowl.
“Don’t rush.” I sat on the floor, exhausted. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
My own words caught me up. What was I doing? This animal was doomed. I had condemned him, only moments before.
“Pru? Everything okay?” As Albert opened the door, I shoved my wounded hand in my pocket. The decision was made before I even spoke.
“Everything’s fine, Albert.” I called back. “I’m just spending some quality time with Rocky back here. I think he’s going to be just fine.”
Chapter Twenty-five
I took the letter with me. Albert, in all fairness, was loath to let it go. He’s enough of a coward to want to toe the line sometimes. But he can’t stand up to me, or any woman, really, and so I got it. What amazed me, as I drove off, was that he didn’t seem to notice how I reached for it—with my left hand—and how I kept my right hidden in my pocket until I was safely out the door.
Good thing Frank wasn’t there, I thought, as I pulled out of the lot. Once I was a few blocks away, out of range of Albert or any other prying eyes I stopped to look at the bite. Blood was still welling up; the raccoon’s teeth had gone deep. But I’d washed it, and I would keep it clean. I pressed the paper towel to the wound. I wasn’t going to kill that animal, or let Albert kill him. That decision had been made. If I was wrong, I was condemning that raccoon to a horrible end. I didn’t think I was, however. And he deserved a chance.
Still, on the slight possibility that I was wrong…In the back of my mind, I began doing the math: How long did I have?
It was all, I quickly realized, ridiculously complicated. I’d gotten the vaccine, years before, when I’d signed up for that practicum. The prophylactic treatment—a series of three shots—had become standard practice with the newer vaccine. It didn’t necessarily block the virus, but it did make treatment easier. The trouble was, once I’d dropped out of the program, I’d also stopped getting the booster shots every six months. I might still have antibodies, but I might not.
As I drove, I pressed my right hand against my leg and tried to remember anything else I could about the disease. I knew that time was important, that it could take anywhere from days to months for the virus to make its way to my brain. I seemed to recall something about infection site. It was my hand that had been bitten, not my neck or my body. Did that mean I had more time before the virus got to me? Less?
The disease itself wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. Yes, there was a case—we had studied it—of a girl who had been bitten by a bat somewhere in Wisconsin. They had put her in an artificial coma, and hoped for the best. She had survived. But she was the exception. What usually happened was simple, inexorable, and horrible: You came down with what seemed like the flu. That led to insomnia, confusion, and the classic hypersalivation that led to foaming at the mouth. By the time you were hallucinating, maybe it didn’t matter anymore. You were dead.
Rabies. A suspect bite. We had learned that treatment for a bite was considered medically urgent—not necessarily an emergency. I had a day or two. Maybe three, on the outside, if I wanted to be completely safe. It was pointless to speculate. I would start the shots as soon as I’d freed that raccoon.
First, I had to deal with Jerry Gaffney, and whoever had masterminded that letter. It felt good to think about something other than my hand, and this was a real puzzle. Jerry Gaffney hadn’t drafted that letter. Jerry Gaffney wasn’t the kind of guy who invoked legal counsel. If he knew the word “counsel” at all, it was from his own scrapes with the law. As our prior confrontation had shown, he had a much more direct take on animal control. No, there was someone else involved here, someone using the oafish property manager as the heavy.
Driving relaxed me, even as my hand started to throb, and as my car ate up the road, I realized that I was probably making the situation more complicated than it had to be. Why was I going to the Evergreen condos at all? What I should have done was simply taken the animal. Released him. Then I could have left Albert to deal with the consequences. Or, no, I had too much pity for dumb beasts—then I could have explained that we’d crossed wires. Between our full roster of responsibilities, Albert and I had simply mixed our messages. He’d gotten the letter and signed for it, sure. But by then, I’d already removed the animal somewhere far, far away.
Would there be legal ramifications? I didn’t want to reread the letter as I drove. Didn’t want to move my right hand, truth be told. But I didn’t see what they could do, really. It wasn’t like anyone else wanted Albert’s job. And mine, well, I was freelance anyway. Who else would be affected?
Doc Sharpe, that was who. If Jerry or his colleagues wanted to, they could make trouble not only for me, but for the old Yankee. And D
oc Sharpe had been not only a good source of employment, but a friend as well. As different as we were, he had respected me. He’d also overlooked the lapses in my training and certification while referring me for jobs with his own credentials as backing. He had vouched for me, more than once. I didn’t want to bring more down on his head, not now.
I needed to confront whoever was behind this. Have it out, once and for all. With a renewed sense of purpose, I accelerated. Evergreen Hills—or, at least, Jerry Gaffney—was in my sites. It was getting dark, and the rain had turned patchy, but I’d be damned if I let that overgrown bully get away with causing trouble for anyone—two- or four-legged—I cared about.
Not that he was easy to find. The rain had let up again by the time I turned in at the gaudy sign, once again wondering how the color green could be made to look so unnatural. But the light was dimming, the autumn afternoon fading fast. This time, I parked right in front of the office. The door was locked, and nobody answered when I knocked, so I set off on foot, convinced that the slovenly manager had to be somewhere in the complex.
It was beautiful, even soggy. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, as I followed the slate path between two of the buildings, I had to admire the setting. True to its name, the development—four buildings, total—was surrounded by towering pines. Deep in their greenery, I heard a cardinal singing, the usual macho boasts, and I stopped to look around. In the dimming light, I couldn’t see any sign of his red plumage, but that’s what the song was about, after all. And as I kept walking, it occurred to me to wonder just how thick these woods had been—and how many similarly majestic trees had been cut down to make room for these upscale homes.
“Mine! Mine! Mine! ” The cardinal kept singing, the last call of the day. Yes, I guess the desire for a home was universal. But it wasn’t like folks were clamoring for condos up here. In fact, I had yet to meet a resident, although I knew that the development had been open—and supposedly selling—for more than a year.