He goes out to put the cat to bed. While Pumpernickel sups on the concrete porch in the backyard the trellis fence behind him starts to shake. Over come two raccoons. They eye the cat food hungrily.
He stands up from his rocking chair, clap his hands.
“Hey!” he says. “You just go’n back over that fence.”
They stop, look at him, wait.
“Go on, now,” he says. “Yall, just go on.”
Clap, clap, clap.
The clapping persuades them. Reluctantly the raccoons climb to the top of the fence. In unison they turn back to him. By the moonlight he can see it in their eyes. The eyes that say, “I can’t believe you’re making us do this.”
He claps twice more and the raccoons bow their heads, defeated They scurry over the fence, back to the neighbors’ yard.
Inside, before he switches off the lamp to go to bed, he scratches another item off his bucket list: Insult raccoons.
