A little different focus for my blog today…I mean, obviously I’m still going to mention wildlife and nature because I almost always talk about wildlife and nature but this time, I’m also going to mention a monster in the park.
That’s right, I said monster.
Here's what happened. Friday afternoon, I popped over to the park by my house and walked around, like I always do, looking for perfect photo opportunities. I managed to get a few pics of this heron that I posted the other day:
But mostly wasn’t having much luck.
Then I heard this crazy loud chirping, like a whole bunch of little birds, and I couldn’t see them so I decided to meander to the other side of the park that I don’t usually go to. Mostly because it's really close to the road and the houses that line the park and there usually aren't many things to take pictures of.
Which was still true when I got to that side because I never did find the boisterous birdies, all I saw was this cardinal:
And I couldn’t even really get a good shot of it because it was hiding in the brush surrounding this culvert thing and refused to pose, even after I asked it nicely.
Then, while I was pondering the unbearably diva nature of my so-called feathered friends, I glanced down into the aforementioned culvert thing and saw it or rather them.
Handprints.
And I just any handprints but tiny little baby handprints, leading INTO the culvert.
Wait, is culvert the right word? I've said it so many times today, it's lost all meaning and I don’t know if it was the correct word in the first place.
But I digress...the point is, there were baby handprints where no baby should have its hands. I immediately start looking around thinking to myself, 'Surely a baby didn’t somehow climb down this hill, through the brush and into the culvert, and no one has yet noticed it’s missing. That would be crazy business.'
Which didn’t stop me from putting down my camera and climbing down the hill into the brush, just to make sure. Mostly because I didn't want to be sitting at home Friday, watching the news and hearing about some poor baby that got lost in Hunter Park and then being forced to admit to the police that I knew where the baby went, I just couldn't be bothered to let anyone know at the time.
In any case, when I got a little closer, I realized that, although there were a ton of little handprints, there were no footprints.
And no little slide marks like from a baby’s knees, like there would be if it were crawling.
My first thought, of course, was a super gymnastic baby, walking around on its hands.
But that didn’t really make any sense. Besides, that’s when I noticed this:
Claw marks.
The baby hands had CLAWS.
Which means my next thought was obviously: demon baby.
A demon baby with the face of that that horribly creepy clown, Pennyywise, from IT.
"We all float down here!" I said, giggling to myself and pretending I wasn't ever so slightly terrified that a white-gloved hand was going to snake out of the culvert (that is the right word, by the way, totally stopped and looked it up) and drag me to my watery death.
Stephen King has a lot to answer for.
At this point, common sense reared its head and suggested that it was much more likely that instead of a demon baby, I was dealing with a raccoon. Or, by the looks of all the prints, a whole horde of raccoons.
Some people might find this comforting. These are not people who dealt with the Unfortunate Raccoon Infestation of 2005 and subsequently read way too many articles on the brutal nature of raccoons and how they are "distantly related to bears."
So, to make a long story slightly less long, I flung myself back up the hill, faster than any chubby middle-aged woman should be moving, grabbed my camera and headed for the car.
Which means:
I didn’t rescue a baby.
I didn’t get very many good pictures.
I’m probably going to stay on my side of the park from now on.
And I'm still debating which is scarier: demon baby or raccoon.
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