Posted on 09/11/2006 11:27:59 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows
Stephanie King had to tell her music teacher that a raccoon was to blame for her missing homework. "I explained that the raccoon fell from the ceiling in my bathroom and it ran into my bedroom," the 13- year-old seventh grader at Osceola Middle School told the St. Petersburg Times. "Animal control came out to get it and they couldn't catch it and they said we couldn't go in my room."
Stephanie's grandmother vouched for her story Friday with school officials. "I told them she can't get her homework, her books, because everything is locked in the bedroom," Natalie King said.
The female raccoon and its babies crashed to the Kings' bathroom floor Wednesday night. Until that moment, the family didn't know the roof was leaking, much less that a family of raccoons was living in their ceiling.
The mother raccoon escaped into Stephanie's room. It finally made its way Thursday night into the trap set by Pinellas County Animal Services officers, who picked up the critter the next morning.
Once, I actually got to use the classic "the dog ate my homework" excuse. We had a Basset Hound named Bear who chewed on one of my notebooks one day.
Me too - and I was in grad school! My Jack Russell Terrier shredded a paper I was studying.
My cat ate my tax forms. True story!
Me too, but that probably because I put meat drippings on the homework and left it in his bowl...
but that probably= but that was probably
So let me get this straight...A "raccoon" just happened to be walking around on the ceiling in your bathroom, fell off, and then ran into your bedroom where all your homework happened to be?
They'll do worse than that:
Does that work on college students too?
Wasn't me! (note my ID)
True story: last year, I opened the back door of my apartment (open air back porch, stairs leading down) and saw a raccoon looking up at me...sitting under a lawn chair. It was a Sunday afternoon about 4:30 pm (first thought: uh oh, could be
rabid--not normally out during the day, but a sick raccoon could be...) I didn't touch him.
A fellow tenant's cat, who comes into my apt. once in awhile, was on the stairs meowing up at me, nervously, as if to say
"get this weird thing outta here!" After a few minutes the raccoon scampered away (it seemed nervous when it saw me,
but relaxed a bit when he saw I meant no harm). Later I
asked some people online if I did the right thing,
_NOT_ petting him, even though he seemed cute.
"Yeah, just as well--he could have had rabies. Even if he didn't, better to be safe than sorry...And by the way
some raccoons do come out on late afternoons to sun
themselves; it doesn't mean they're rabid."
A few weeks later, the neighbor's cat was in my apartment and saw a foot-tall stuffed raccoon on the floor. The cat
froze then slowly backed away. Thought that was funny!
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