Keeping the Trash in the Refrigerator
... it ran out from under the bed. Something electric ran through my body and showered sparks all over my brain, like touching a raw wire. BANG!!! And it was dead, an ex-cr. But that was far from the end of the ordeal. If there had been one, there might be more. After a moment’s consideration, I turned on all the lights, dressed rapidly, snatched my keys and purse from the dresser, and flew up park roads and down the highway in my Camry, on a mission for high-powered bug spray. Oh, the state of mind I was in! I had never seen a cr in any cabin I’d occupied at Beavers Bend and had never been in a cabin alone before. Now it had happened, and I was alone and helpless if there were others. I kept trying to recover my reason. “Think!” I said out loud to myself over and over. My heart was racing, and I was trembling. My mind was inflamed with graphic and disturbing possibilities. “Think!” I would try to reason with myself—the odds of seeing another after having never seen one before; the power of bug spray; the fact that they can’t really kill me. But then I would lapse into panic again. All the convenience stores on the highway were closed. Walmart in Broken Bow was closed. Piggly Wiggly was closed. I roared from place to place in ever greater desperation. At last I entered Pruett’s Groceries at 9:45 p.m, fifteen minutes before they closed their doors for the night. I found a spray called MAX, specifically for cr’s. A quick trip through the register, and I was racing back to the cabin. I entered a fully lighted cabin and went to work immediately. I eliminated any possibility of temptation for the creatures in my kitchen, putting all food, even the plastic container of oatmeal, into the refrigerator and taking out the trash. I walked across the circle to the dumpster in the very late evening darkness with my trash bag and then could not make myself open the dumpster for fear that some of them were in there. I set the bag on the ground in front of the dumpster and this morning had to clean up the mess the raccoons had made of it. Re-entering the cabin, I raised all the windows and pulled all furniture and other items—my book bag, the linen exchange tub, everything—out from the walls so that I could spray and also so any more of the beasts would have no hiding place. I read the instructions on the can: “Spray along baseboards. Use attached nozzle to spray into crevices and other hard to reach areas. S...