It was a late winter morning when I spied a raccoon walking across my porch. I dropped what I was doing and went outside to investigate. Being primarily nocturnal, I was surprised to see her abroad during the day. The truth is I don’t know if it was male or female but I feel within my rights to invoke artistic license and assume the latter. In any case, I followed her until she climbed a large maple tree next to the house. I spent most of the day watching and photographing my raccoon.  Initially she retreated to the upper branches and took several naps throughout the day. After some hours she descended the trunk and took shelter in a hollow at eye level. There she struck some of the most fetching poses possible in a setting made for raccoons. After I’d had my way with her she apparently tired of life as a procyonid supermodel and descended the trunk and wandered off into the nearby woods. I absolutely couldn’t believe my luck! Would anyone believe that I hadn’t hired a rent-a-raccoon and plopped it in some kind of  Rocky raccoon movie set? A beautiful raccoon strangely appears in broad daylight, and poses in an idyllic setting right beside my house. Too good to be true!

I was thinking about the unlikelihood of my good fortune as I walked down the hill to pick up my car that was being worked on in a garage a mile or so away. I was kind of in a hurry as the garage would soon be closing. On my way I walked by a feed and pet store. Not having much time and not needing anything from such a place, it was strange that I decided to pop in. This is where things get even stranger. When I looked in the store one of the first things that greeted my eyes was one of those hollowed out carpet lined trees for cats. What was in the hollow cat tree? You guessed it, a raccoon doll! I had just photographed, for the first time ever, a raccoon in a hollow tree and was thinking about raccoons in hollow trees as I entered a store that I was inexplicably drawn to and saw nothing less than a raccoon doll staring at me from a hollow cat tree! If this doesn’t prove the existence of God at least it  proves that life contains delightful surprises. I bought the raccoon doll and the cat tree which sit beside me as I write.