Archive for July 28th, 2008
Rodney
July 28th, 2008 | Author: Kevin Steele
Rodney was the nickname that my family gave to the raccoon who so huggingly gave me rabies. I was a teenager in Aiken South Carolina and was weeding the bushes at the side of the house. Afton was asleep on the couch and Mom was out doing errands. I heard a strangling gurgled noise and turned around to see a raccoon standing at the end of the row. Literally, standing on 2 feet, swaying like a drunkard. I didn’t know what to do. It was a short stalemate with me standing on one side not knowing what to do and him staring me down through a haze.
Quick as a flash, he closed the 10 foot distance, jumped, wrapped his legs around my leg, and started going to town on my knee with his little raccoon teeth. It took me a second for shock to wear off, and then I kicked him across the yard. I should have followed him to figure out where he was going, but instead, I ran inside yelling about how I had been bit by a raccoon. Afton woke up long enough to look at me, say yeah right, and then role back around back to sleep.
I waited until my mom came home, and told her that I’d been bit by a raccoon. She didn’t believe me either, until I showed her the hole in my pants and said, why would I do this. So we went to the Doctor and I had a Bazillion shots and had to come back for 5 more weeks while they rotated more shots on my body. By the time I was half way finished with the shot treatment, I found out that the neighbor lady had also been bitten. She had then dragged the raccon scratching, biting and hissing all the way from their Blueberry patch to the front steps of her house. At this point her husband brought a baseball bat and beat the raccoon to death. They sent it off for testing and sure enough…. It did have Rabies.
BTW, I despise raccoons. To quote Kaylene….
“They’re oversized cockroaches”.
Dedicated to the memory of Rodney the Rabid Raccoon.
Comic owned by Mitch Clem at www.mitchclem.com
Posted in 