Now I Want To Make Him Into A Hat

All of the wild animals in our back yard are turning white. WHITE. I'm pretty sure there's a serial Animal Bleacher running amok in the Longfellow neighborhood, and I'm going to DO something about it.

I cannot stand idly by, waiting for some kind of Cruella De Ville wanna-be to destroy another innocent woodland creature's chances of hooking up with other woodland creatures. STRIPES WERE MADE BY GOD, people. It's just not natural to take that away from them. It's all they have: they eat acorns, for christ's sake.

And I'll be damned if I'll let a white (animal) supremacist infect the superior, liberal group-think of our closely knit, bluer than balls, upper-middle class community by heartlessly and repeatedly dunking helpless animals in a giant vat of bleach. Or maybe it's peroxide. EITHER WAY. It's just wrong.

I began noticing the problem a few weeks ago when I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Albino Squirrel. At first, I thought he was a Swiffer Dust Wand, just blowing in the breeze, so I almost chased him down and snatched him up for use inside the house. I'm on a budget, don't judge me.

But do you see? THAT RIGHT THERE is what the government likes to call RACIAL PROFILING. It happens even to the best of us. I've made my peace with my faults.

Recently, I began seeing other albino squirrels and then I realized that maybe there is a whole family of blind, white squirrels and that they're crowding out the regular old grey squirrels which is totally possible because when I was in Vancouver, all I saw were black squirrels, GIANT ones, and it was sort of ironic because I don't remember seeing any black people the whole time we stayed in the city, but now that I think about it, it totally makes sense because Vancouver is surrounded by all that ocean and everyone knows home boys can't swim.

So remember when I told you about the raccoon? Well, I didn't mention this part because it sounded so ludicrous at the time that I wanted to spare Gray's reputation and only post about the fact that the raccoon scared the manhood out of him, but now that I know that a serial Animal Bleacher is on the loose, I feel it's my duty to flesh out these details. I didn't tell you the part of the story where Gray exclaimed that the raccoon was white. Like ALL white.

Being the rational, animal-color-knowing woman that I am, I said, "Psh. It must have been a opossum." (Now that I typed "opossum", I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use "a" or "an" in front of it because I know you use "an" when the word starts with a vowel, but in this case the vowel is silent, and it sounds funny to say "an opossum" out loud. God, English is hard.)

But he insisted that it was, in fact, a WHITE raccoon. I was convinced he was mistaken. Until last night. (Pretend there's dramatic music emphasizing my suspense-filled pause right here...)

Last night, I was sitting on the deck with Gray & Veronica* when I heard a creeping noise from the direction of the driveway, which I immediately assumed what the sound of the devil coming to take my soul, but when I strained my eyes into the darkness...a pair of yellow eyes strained back, and everyone knows the devil's eyes are red, so clearly it was some kind of animal.

Gray also heard the noise and when he turned to look, the animal's head popped briefly up so that all three of us could see that it was a gigantic WHITE raccoon.

I raced to get a flashlight so that I could seek out this mysterious creature and marvel at it's lack of markings, and just as I knelt on the ground with my face under the deck, Veronica decided she wanted to stomp from above and "scare it out". AT MY FACE.

I quickly abandoned my raccoon-level post and retreated to bed, but as I lay in the darkness, those glowing raccoon eyes haunted me. "Help me, I've been bleached by a madman," they said. "I am no longer welcome at home and must live amongst the herd of albino squirrels across the street. THEY EAT ACORNS," those eyes said.

Then and there, I resolved to stop the monster that is stripping the Longfellow creatures of their respective markings. Whoever he is - whatever he may be capable of - I will find him and I will put an end to his twisted games.

And then possibly I might have him color my hair. I don't know, we'll have to see how it plays out.

*So I asked out landlady-slash-roomie what she wanted me to use as her anonymous blog name (obviously, nobody wants to be associated with this particular blog), and she came up with Veronica. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to write her as the Archie version or the Mars version.