Husbands are like having raccoons in your chimney ...

In 1983, my then-husband and I bought our first house. It was a substantial 1770 sf 4/2 in a cul-de-sac. We got it relatively cheap because it was in Union City which at the time was the armpit of the Bay Area (and might still be, I dunno’). Our house was in a nice neighborhood in the very last row of our tract and backed up to the road that ran in front of Coyote Hills Regional Park, which is situated right on the edge of the bay at the Dumbarton Bridge. Also along that road was Turk Island Dump. The incongruity of a park and a dump being neighbors always left me scratching my head in curiosity. Anyway, as a consequence of these two places running for miles along the back of our tract, we had a variety of critters in our neighborhood; possums, beavers, raccoons, giant rats and potato bugs. I was always finding reasons to shudder with the willies!

There was a particularly endearing family of raccoons that accessed the cul-de-sac via the street drain and they were a curious bunch always getting into garages, garbage cans and open cars. Really annoying little raiders but we thought they were cute … well, right up until we saw one of them kill a cat that is. The biggest of the bunch stood about three feet tall and was pretty intimidating to run into in the dark.

We lived there about 6 years and during that time I had a friend and neighbor named Yolie we haven't seen each other in years but our boys were best friends then. She and her husband were like Mrs. Winchester, they just kept adding onto their little house over the years until it was a big rambling rabbit warren of living areas, dining areas, a country kitchen, and bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom – and that was just on the first floor. Yolie had a formal living room decorated all in a creamy white – carpets, upholstery, throw pillows – it was like a roomful of marshmallow cream.

One weekend when they were away the raccoon family entered Yolie’s house via the chimney in her formal living room. You wouldn’t think a raccoon would fit but he did and he left literally thousands of little black paw prints all over her lovely marshmallow room and the entire downstairs. My family moved away shortly after that but we stayed in touch over the years and so I know that once the raccoons had found a way to break in, they just kept coming, pilfering the cookie jar and having parties in the pantry. Yolie and her husband tried everything including various screens and grates and finally at their wits end, even animal control but they wouldn’t help and nothing worked and the little raiders kept making themselves at home. One October evening I attended a Princess House crystal party at Yolie's. There were about 8 of us at the party all chatting and nibbling when we heard the scratching and clawing of what was clearly an animal in the flue. Yolie called her husband and he had the bright idea that if he would started a fire it would chase the raccoon back up the chimney -- instead what happened is that the embers from the wood caught the fur of what were two raccoons in the chimney on fire – they came crashing down the flue as spectacular balls of flame landing on the logs and scattering them everywhere then running through the rabbit warren of a house, up the curtains, on top of furniture, under tables, blazing infernos of smelly, burning fur. I don’t remember if the raccoons were screaming or if it was just all of us. It seemed to go on forever with everyone running and screaming. The smaller of the two racoons found his way out by running directly through the screen of Yolie’s open kitchen door and into the night. The largest finally collapsed in a smoldering heap in the dining room where Yolie’s husband threw a nearby rag rug on him and put out the remaining flames. We all just stood there holding each other and sobbing, surrounded by random bits of flaming objects. What had been just an annoyance was now a full on disaster that finally got Animal Control motivated. In a totally unrelated outcome I never saw Yolie after that night. We just lived too far away from each other. A few months after that party my husband and I separateded. It’s irrational I know but I somehow relate my marriage ending to that night of flaming raccoons.

I think husbands might actually be like having raccoons in your chimney. They can be cute and cuddly or annoying as hell, but if you make a fleeting decision you can be left with nothing but a flurry of random burning objects.

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