Life of The Raccoon

A Story by awilliams

Slinking through the trashcan, The Raccoon scavenged for any scraps of delectable, at the very least palatable, remnants of a meal someone had left outside the restaurant. Nothing arises and The Raccoon ventures off crossing the street to the deli, once again hoping to detect any form of food now, standards ever lowering. The Raccoon had tried many times to gather some food on this night, but nothing had come to fruition. Waiting: stalking all the people inside the various buildings in town. Ever hoping for someone: anyone to leave behind remnants of a satisfying meal. No one did. Sauntering around for hours, The Raccoon made no less than 30 laps around town. To many this would appear to obviously be squandering valuable time. But not for The Raccoon. To the Raccoon, even the thought of encountering some food , regardless of kind, quantity, or caliber, made it worth the while. All in search of an enjoyable evening in town.

From a young age, The Raccoon had been rejected by all of raccoon society. He had been the runt of his litter; the slightest; most feeble; most abominable raccoon out of the entire litter. Jilted by his parents. Thought pathetic by the other racoons in his litter. Not a soul had an ounce of desire to spend time with him, then or now. But this did not stop The Raccoon from trying to spend time with them. Although not even society’s garbage wanted anything to do with The Racoon, he aspired to be with the aristocracy of society. Following them had become his greatest pastime.

The Raccoon spent a plethora of time making his rounds each night. It was a regular occurrence for him to simply walk copious laps encompassing all food hotspots in Chatham. These excursions often derived nothing for The Raccoon: but this meant virtually nothing to him. Although a sad existence for The Raccoon, occasionally he found solace in the utmost solitude that came with these dusken outings. Even without ever having genuinely experienced a steady source of food, The Raccoon had only been compelled to trek the protracted, onerous journey from his lair to more central areas of Chatham in recent months. Food had grown especially scarce in these times; The Raccoon had been cut off. As a littlun, despite their overall neglect towards him, The Raccoon’s parents had always attempted to attain some food for him. Poking at every possible source of food in the hope of finding something, The Raccoon’s parents had always managed to scrape up some feed from somewhere. But now it was over. Done. Finished indefinitely. After years of scavenging for their runt, the task began to feel redundant to The Raccoon’s parents and their weariness spurred their halting of the codling.

In the beginning, there seemed to be an abundance of food, a cornucopia of food from which The Racoon could choose. People were generous; they were caring. For a young little animal making his way in the world they would help. But as time went on, and they began to repeatedly notice The Racoon, giving him food became redundant and they stopped. In the beginning, The Raccoon was often times permitted a multitude of courses, nourishing him for extensive periods of time. In the beginning, The Racoon grew eccentric, delusionally believing that it would always be this way. In the beginning, there was heaps of success for The Racoon to feast on.

Then came the onset of reality. The realization that this boom of food would not last struck The Racoon unmitigated, pure force; It decimated The Racoon: A wrecking ball obliterating an abandoned building. For weeks on end, The Racoon went without a single meal. Nothing omitting the intermittent morsel from an unfortunate plate of leftovers.

As The Raccoon's hunger level flourished, his desperation mounted to go along with it. Hunger and desperation grew in tandem. As desperation heightened, standards dropped. Though they were never high to begin with, The Raccoon's expectations in terms of food continuously sunk ever lower. His threshold for eating things became low enough for a mouse to climb over with ease. Desperation and expectations became inverse. For every notch The Raccoon's desperation levels were kicked up, his expectations were thrown down one more notch. This trend continued on for a fortnight. It got progressively worse. Desperation heightened. Standards waned equally. A vicious cycle. The cycle was never-ending, pitting desperation against expectations continuously and rigorously for what The Raccoon interpreted as an eternity. On and on the cycle went, occupying The Raccoon's every waking hour, minute, and second until the cycle engulfed The Racoon and took control of him. Mere domination. Until it happened. It had been inevitable since the beginning and it had been only a matter of time until it happened: The Racoon hit rock bottom. He could go no lower than this. This was not repairable. Rock. Bottom.