I arise early every morning to power walk. It helps me justify the afternoon nap. Occasionally, I take a little 2-mile jaunt that includes passing an over-grown glade area where I'm sure all kinds of wildlife lurk. I like this trek because it has a slight incline and it challenges my cardiovascular system. That means I'm sucking wind by the time I crest the little molehill! One morning last month as I was headed up the hill, I noticed a strange looking cat crossing the road in front of me. It was between 5:30 and 6 am, so the sun was not completely up yet, but it wasn't dark. This cat with an awfully strange gate proceeded to climb a cottonwood tree, and I thought that I'd never seen a cat climb like that before. I was keeping my eye on him/her thinking all the while that this gimpy feral cat was going to jump on my head just as I passed by the tree it was climbing. I never really believed that old wives' tale that "wild animals are just as afraid of you as you are of them." If that were true, bull snakes would be scream when they saw me pass by my snowball bush.
So, just before I get to the tree with the cat, the cat turns to look at me, and WHOA! This was no cat. It was an albino raccoon! I knew this because it didn't have a cat nose and it had rings on its tail (but they were whitish rings!) AND it had beady little pink eyes. I would've taken a picture with my cell phone, but that never works out nicely for me. I usually get a nice picture of my finger. Besides, the coon was staring me down and I was a bit nervous. CREAPY, but cool. It also gave me an adrenaline rush that shaved 4 minutes off my 2-miler.
This was a real wildlife sighting for me, so once I got back into my neighborhood and back to my walking buddies (Toni, Pollyanna, & Che), I told them about my close encounter. They believed me, so I just assumed that EVERYONE would believe me. NOT! As it turns out, the females in my life believed every word, but the males, well...not so much. Seriously?! Who would make up a story about an albino raccoon? I did think about embellishing the story with a little side note about how the ghost coon jumped out of the tree onto my head and got its claws tangled in my hair and how I had to use some cage fighting moves to put him down. But then, that just seemed unbelievable, so I refrained. I almost felt betrayed in the face of so much skepticism, so I did what anyone else would do...I Googled it and here is what I found.
This coon's eyes are not pink like my coon, but still, I felt that a picture was proof. Albino raccoons exist. Toni's husband, BP, I can't reveal his true identity so as to protect him from ridicule, even sought me out at church to make fun of my close encounter. He told me that while he was driving across the reservation on his way to work he spotted a North American Desert Albino Moose. What BP didn't realize is that I'm a native New Mexican and I know there is no such thing as a desert moose. Albino, maybe, but meese don't dwell in the desert. When my daughter, Amanda (a believer) told her husband, Jeremy, (an unbeliever) that it was real and that I had Googled it, Jeremy's reply was "Duh! If you Google UNICORN I bet you'd find a picture of that too." AAARRRGH! All this skepticism! So, I Googled unicorn and this is what I found:
A deer with one horn growing in the middle of its head. Fox News. It's real! And that makes my Ghost Coon story valid, so there you go male skeptics! I have to add here that my missionary son totally believed every word, but then, I send him money?! Wes said that he imagined that a Ghost Coon sighting was a lot like a BigFoot sighting...only a select few get the opportunity.Now, for the best part...BP had Toni forward this picture to me, taken over in Aztec in the dumpster at the Senior Center. I think this is BP's way of apologizing for his unmerited skepticism and his outlandish tale about the moose.
Lastly, my friend Marla sent this picture to me today. Yeah, it pretty much looks like an up close picture of a window screen, but if you stare at it long enough, it turns out that there are raccoons behind the screen. It was taken last night, and lo' and behold, one of the raccoons is an albino! Another eyewitness. Marla is not prone to exaggeration. She did, however, suggest that our wildlife encounters may be print worthy...like National Geographic or National Inquirer. I say National Inquirer because I think they pay.
So there it is: MoJo's BELIEVE IT OR NOT! Next posting: BigFoot Stalks 6th grade Teacher!
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