Saw the cat staring fixedly out the glass door to the backyard the other night, and went to investigate. Our birdbath is set right against the glass, to give my cat Telemann the best possible view of the critters that come to drink. It’s an imperfect balancing act, Telemann’s need for entertainment versus the drinkers’ feelings of safety. The birds and chipmunks are eternally skittish, but the squirrels figured out long ago that an invisible barrier had been placed there by the universe to protect them from the cat, and they continue drinking unfazed even as Telemann throws himself against the glass. Sometimes I worry that he will give himself a concussion.
But this time he wasn’t throwing himself at the glass, just staring intently, his body rigid in a pose that in a hunting dog would have been termed a “point.” In the dark I discerned a hairy, brownish, basketball-sized something sitting in the birdbath. Then I noticed two small ears neatly outlined in white, and after many minutes the creature moved and revealed his pointed snout and robber mask—a raccoon!
His nose was not more than two inches away from mine, and I was holding my breath thinking that he would scamper off before I could get a good look at him. I whispered to my spouse to come see, and he put his nose up to the glass, next to mine. And here is the strange thing: the raccoon looked straight at us, and then went right back to doing what he was doing. Which was—what else?—washing his hands obsessively, in a perfect imitation of Lady Macbeth, so that I could almost hear him muttering, out, damned spot! out, I say!
Although the water in the birdbath hadn’t frozen yet, it was a chilly night, with a cold front blowing in. I knew that raccoons tend to be OCD about hand hygiene, but why did he have to plop his whole rotund self in the birdbath, as opposed to just dipping his hands in?
Wanting to test his nonchalance, we tapped gently on the glass. He ignored us, and went on scrubbing. We tapped louder. No reaction. Perhaps he was deaf? Or, I thought, suddenly remembering the warnings against wild animals who show no fear of humans, maybe he had rabies! But the technical term for rabies is hydrophobia, and if this raccoon was suffering from anything, it was hydrophilia.
Reassured by this diagnosis, my spouse opened the sliding door a couple of inches, hoping for some kind of reaction. But the raccoon just kept rubbing and scouring away at his slender, graceful, human-looking hands, as if in despair at ever getting them totally clean (all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!)
In our pride, we homo sapiens are not accustomed to being ignored by wildlife. Feared, yes, or even attacked. But never just ignored! So I’m sorry to say that after many minutes of watching the Lady M act, I started to feel somewhat…bored. Guiltily I thought of Jane Goodall, who spent months tracking a tribe of chimpanzees in the African jungle before actually setting eyes on them. Clearly I would never have made even a halfway decent wildlife biologist.
As I was thinking these dispiriting thoughts, the raccoon heaved himself out of the birdbath and waddled off into the gloom. He obviously had needed more than a handwash, since what little water remained in the birdbath was full of dirt. I got up to leave my post, but he came lumbering back, this time to get a drink. Through the cracked-open door I could hear him making slurping, smacking, rather endearing little sounds.
And then he went back to washing his hands.
