Cole Porter once wrote the definitive lyrics on romance:  “Birds do it, Bees do it, Even educated fleas do it, Let’s do it, Let’s fall in love.” Frankly I don’t know what kind of voyeuristic tendencies Mr. Porter had in studying the romancing of fleas.  I can only imagine it takes some sort of large magnifying glass and a great deal of curiosity. You’d think that the fleas would know better, being all educated and stuff.

But after last night, I have had the chance to ponder the au-naturale nature of, as Bob Seger puts it, “how the Night Moves”.

I sit here writing this, trying to figure out 2 things:  1) How much coffee will it take for me to stay awake this morning (I drink decaf; see my post Half-Baked https://larryland.blog/2022/02/17/half-baked/) and 2) how in heck I’m going to write this in a family-friendly format (the dreaded FFF), or risk the well-deserved ire of my wife.

You see, at about 3 in the morning, my wife and I wake up to a horrible sound.  Imagine, if you will, a set of very rusty metal gears grinding against one another – screech, Screech, SCREEEEEEECH. We immediately think a coyote is attacking another feral animal such as a possum, duck or Senator Ted Cruz. If you can’t imagine it, this video is pretty much what we encountered (https://www.youtube.com/Raccoon Love).

Now imagine me standing by the pool in my pajamas and flip-flops with a flashlight waving my “Duck-Stick” (more on that in a few) as I see two raccoons at my pool (or as I think of it, “LarryLand Lake”).  There is a large one on the deck, about the size of Jason Mamoa, and a smaller one actually in my pool, screeching at each other.  I wave my duck-stick from across the pool, the big one backs off, the small one gets out, and then they repeat the drill. Ultimately I chase them off. Frankly, the sight of me in my jammies at 3am waving my duck-stick is probably enough to ward off most wild critters, including Jason Mamoa.

We’re trying to figure this out. My wife is wondering if they’re being randy raccoons, but it would appear that the smaller girl raccoon is taking a cold shower. Given that, I’m wondering if this is a bigger male chasing away a smaller rival.

We turn to the internet for answers. Aside from the fact that Senator Ted Cruz makes similar sounds, we find the video above that would seem to confirm my wife’s suspicions. But the pool?  Hot tub maybe, but not the pool; the mechanics don’t, um, seem to fit quite right.

So I look up male vs. female raccoons. All I find is that the female raccoon looks exactly like the male but it 25% smaller (which again would explain Ted Cruz). It could simply be a regular sized male raccoon (such as me) being chased into the pool by a 25% larger Jason Mamoa raccoon (he is Aquaman after all).

That aside, we do understand the feral qualities of Mr. Mamoa. These are best described by Honest Trailers (https://www.youtube.com/Aquaman) as having that certain quality known as a “Smolder”.  So, either answer is possible.  If Jason Mamoa were in my backyard late at night, it is certainly possible that my wife would have to take a cold shower in the pool, or that I’d be shrinking in fear of his burning gaze and large physique. No one named Larry has, to the best of my knowledge, ever been described as having a “smolder”. Mr. Mamoa may smolder, I’m best described as “older and molder with no smolder”.

So, perhaps this raccoon was the Jason Mamoa of the Mammal community in the Moffett tract. Women shriek for him, Men fear him, and I get no sleep. 

The problem is that there are no obvious signs that can provide proof that this is indeed a case of the “Night Moves” – flowers, wine, soft music, the back seat of Bob’s 60 Chevy. As another aside (heck with so little sleep did you really expect me to stay on track?), only the backseat of a 60 Chevy is romantic; you never hear of someone in the back seat of a 2012 Prius. But I would like to see Mr. Mamoa try.

Which explains my duck-stick. I learned this way back in ’92, when I was returning home from a day at the office.  I’m in my suit and tie, with my briefcase stuffed with actuarial study notes (yes, I’m sticking with that story, even though it might have been lunch). In my condo complex we have to walk across man-made streams on little bridges. There in the middle of one bridge is a male duck biting the neck of a female duck, who is quacking loudly as if being attacked (sense a theme here?). I chase them away with my foot and realize that (with a little bit of jealousy) they were not, er, ducking. To this day I’m pretty sure she gave me a withering stare of anger (or, as Webster’s dictionary defines it, “smoldering”).

Once we moved here to our house, I learned that Duck Season is really “Duck Season”, if you know what I mean.  I keep my handy duck-stick by the pool – about a 6 foot length of PVC pipe that I can wave around.  Perhaps I should call it a No-I-Won’t-Use-That-Word-In-A-Family-Article stick, which would seem more accurate given its use but took me wayyy too long to type.

So, even without Marvin Perkin’s help (Mutual of Omaha’s wild kingdom never explained how nature got “wild”), I have learned a few things along the way. Still… turnaround is fair play.

This goes all the way back to 1988, when my wife (then girlfriend) and I were on a romantic trip to the rugged Ragged Point Inn in Big Sur. (SAT Double-Word score here!  Rugged is legally allowed only to be used to describe either Big Sur’s coastline of Jason Mamoa. In reality it means a tattered carpet, as in “that darned dog rugged all over my rug”).

My girlfriend planned the whole thing out. We had a cliff-side room overlooking the cliffs (kinda obvious), high up over the crashing Pacific. Very romantic; I did my best to smolder.  When we check in, the lobby has an entire wall dedicated to raccoons. They make it very clear that we should never, and they meant NEVER, leave open the sliding glass doors of our rooms at night or risk a visit from Jason Mamoa. (Oddly, he was born in 1979 and was only about 9 at the time, but he still was probably larger than me and undoubtedly could already smolder).

Late that night, at about 3am, we decide to put on our robes and stroll to the edge of the cliff. It was beautiful – my beautiful girlfriend framed by the soft moonlight, the surf was crashing far below, I was trying, and failing, to smolder. And, as you probably guessed, a pack of raccoons was at our (mostly) closed door. Their leader was standing on his back 2 legs looking right at us. From my view he was about as large as Jason Mamoa, and he definitely was smoldering. I’m pretty sure he was wearing a leather jacket while smoking a cigarette and gesturing to his 60 Chevy.

Yes, we chased them back, even without a trusty duck-stick, but I’m pretty sure I spent the rest of the night being sure they were watching… waiting…. smoldering.  After all, turnaround is fair play.

And that, my friends, is how the night moves. Now I think I’ll take a nap.