Chapter 24. Snoop and the Professor: New Critters
There are lots of new critters and people in my neighborhood in Tallahassee and you find them all around. You already know about Henry the Hawk from my last story. The other night the Professor let me outback to go pee. I went out and what did I run into at the end of our patio? Yes, it was Rocky Raccoon. Yes, the Professor often sings a silly song about Rocky. Now I had seen Rocky earlier along our back fence and when I survey my backyard in the evenings. I had also seen his little eyes peering at my house through the darkness but now we were face to face, Beagle to Raccoon, Snoop to Rocky. I wasn’t sure what to do and I don’t think Rocky knew what to do either. So, in my own mature Beagle way, I nodded to him and he nodded to me and then I quickly ran back into the house. I am really a coward at heart, but don’t tell anyone. Rocky moved on to our neighbor’s yard. He is a cute little critter with wonderful markings and I’m sure I will see him again.
The other morning as I took the Professor on his walk, we went down the hill by the retention pond. Now I don’t know why the Professor calls it a retention pond because I’ve never seen water in it, but I’m not going to risk a 30 minute lecture by the Professor by asking him why it’s called a pond when there’s no water in it. I know better than that. Andy the armadillo lives around the retention pond. He likes to come out of the storm water drainage pipes at the end of the retention pond. Andy the armadillo looks like a small dinosaur. He has armor plating all over his fat body that looks like an old-fashions VW bug car. His little tail and rat like head sticks out of each end of his armored body. Now the Professor will tell you that when he was in Texas, the only armadillos you saw were dead ones along the road. Wow, I don’t think I want to go to Texas. Anyway, Andy never lets me get too close, but he is funny the way he quickly waddles from one place to the next. The professor suspects that he has a family nearby.
The Professor and I took another walk the other day through the wooded area down the hill and on the other side of the retention pond. I like to go here because the critter smells are everywhere. We walk through the woods on a path. It’s usually very quiet but sometimes I have to listen to the Professor explain something to me. I’ve learned to tune him out when he starts talking way too long. There is one point along the path where there is a sharp turn by one of the largest trees I have ever peed on. On that afternoon, the Professor was uncharacteristically very quiet and as we turned by the tree, we ran right into a Mommy deer and her two baby deer. We were all frozen in our tracks. Wow, it took me, the Professor, and the deer by complete and total surprise. The Professor and I were close enough to reach out and touch them. They were a beautiful light brown color with specks of white and yellow. I don’t know how long we looked at each other, but eventually the deer ran away. The Professor said he’d never been that close to wild deer and I know I had never been that close. Wow, I am so glad I was able to meet them. You know at every turn this world is full of all different kinds of critters. It is important that we get to know each other so we can all live together...
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