Bin there. Done that.

“There is no fool like an old fool,” I kept saying to myself. Again. As I did last year and the year before. But this year it was different. It was one of the longest, hardest winters I’ve endured in forever. It was the first winter without my little dog, Vincent, and my beautiful cat, Veronica. And then there were the four months without running water (which is a story I might tell one day, but I remain somewhat traumatized by it still and can’t bring myself to recount it just yet).

And, of course, if there is a fool in me, it involves raccoons.

Now, I know I experienced that whole “opening the door and confronting a carpet of twenty-five raccoons” thing that year. I remember that. I remember vowing never to feed them again. But this winter was different. Because he arrived—Winston—a scrawny, miserable leftover from the cold, scratching the plastic tab at the window for my attention. He was small, like a teenage raccoon, with that bleak, haunted look in his eyes. And I couldn’t ignore him—this child of the wilderness starving on the still-snow-covered ground.

So I fed him. He came at high noon for some reason, growing more content and less dismal as spring spread its promise of green, even under the fire-smoke skies. By early summer, Winston had grown a little fatter but not much bigger, and he became Winstonia.

Have I learned nothing? I am always assuming they are males, and they are not.

Winstonia appeared with five little ones, still not able to eat solid food and wobbly on their little paws. They snuggled around her with pride as she showed them off to me. They always do that, the females, as if to say, “Look what I did.”

“Yes. Look what you did, indeed,” I thought, as the horror of six grown raccoons by winter, dickering about on my deck demanding food, became a real possibility. I had only been feeding Winston, even though some others came and went that I steadfastly ignored. Because he was little and was a boy. And because of the hell of my winter.

So then, how precious can five little baby faces with little hands possibly be? Adorable, furry, bundled, bumbled munchkins with beady little noses and mewling melodies and chippering chirps, who licked my toes so I had to put on shoes (which I hate to do, being a Cape Bretoner and all).

I vowed, of course, to feed them only once a day, and not a lot. “Go, Winstonia,” I’d say, as if she understood. “Go teach your babies how to hunt for food.” Eventually she accepted this, and I would feed them only once a day, and all was well.

I named the babies One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. It was Four who was the problem. He is ADHD, I think. He is all over the place with curiosity and carnage now, lumping and bumping the woodpile even though he is the smallest of them all. He had a bold spirit that took to trying to learn how to scratch at the plastic tab on the window long before the others. He learned quickly how to growl at his siblings over a nugget of cat food, and he would look me in the eye every time. As if to say, “I’m here. I know you.” And so I guess he did.

Of course, I knew I’d be in trouble somewhere along the way. Why I ever told Winstonia to go and teach her babies how to hunt for food is beyond me, because I think she listened to me.

And so it was 9:30 at night, and the plaintive cry began.

The cry of a baby raccoon for its mother.

On and on it went, and I was beginning to become somewhat annoyed with Winstonia. Where was she? A baby was calling. It called and called, and I could barely stand it. A neighbour came by to drop something off, and I asked him where he thought that baby was. He said, “It’s in the garbage can.” And we both wondered where the mother was.

Winstonia had indeed taught her babies where to look for food.

So I had my friend go and look, and he came back to tell me the can was full of water. “Do you have a broom or something?” he asked.

Which I couldn’t find (which might, of course, explain my housekeeping issues, but that’s another story).

We decided to put a shovel in the bin so the baby could climb up and out. And when my friend left, it was quiet for the longest time, and I settled into another James Herriot book.

And then it started again.

And I really couldn’t stand it.

At one o’clock in the morning, I wandered out to the front with my gloves on (okay… my oven mitts made of some sort of silly silicone that doesn’t work, so never buy those dang things), a big towel, and my cellphone with its flashlight on. I had checked the region on the internet for rabies (for which there is none, thank the heavens). I debated calling the neighbours, but it was one o’clock in the morning. Or maybe the fire department. Or the police. Then I thought, I can’t disturb these people over a baby raccoon. They have ghastly criminals to attend to, and drunken drivers, and wildfires, and all those things. And, as hard as it is to believe, not everybody thinks a little raccoon is anything to be concerned about. And I couldn’t risk listening to that reasoning at all.

So I wandered over to the bin by the light of my cellphone—a decrepit old lady in a nightgown wearing oven mitts.

“Why, oh why?” I asked myself.

But that is neither here nor there.

I flipped the lid.

And it was hell.

The stench of hell in eight inches of water, with all sorts of miserable refuse floating and bobbing and stinking. And there, in the middle, desperately holding onto the metal shaft of the shovel, was Four. He was wet. The most pathetic, desperate little face I’ve ever seen.

And I thought, I can’t put my towel or my oven mitts into that sewer.

Where the hell was Winstonia?

I’m not a mother.

Only a mother could bring herself to do such things.

And so I played mother.

And I’m seriously annoyed with Winstonia.

And worried, if the truth be told.

And that was my pathetic little-life-as-it-happens story.

And for those who made it through, well... I’m impressed.

Happy Day to all.