Darkest Suburbia...and Beyond!

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, I am in fact a resident of Darkest Suburbia (for metaphorical values of "darkest").  While I'm technically inside the Portland city limits by a few hundred yards, my neighborhood is interspersed with some moderately dense forest and steep hillside.  Forest Park proper is over some of the hills and on the other side of a freeway, but you definitely don't have to go over the hills and far away to find woodlands -- and, correspondingly, woodland creatures.  Indeed, some months ago I spotted a raccoon in my back yard.  And when said raccoon noticed that I was watching it, said raccoon cheerfully clambered up onto my back porch and came over to look at me through the glass window in my back door.  This is a little friendlier than I like my woodland creatures, notwithstanding a childhood in which I happily read about a raccoon named Ranger Rick in one of the magazines my parents ordered for me.  After making a brief investigation of my back porch, the real live raccoon went on about its business and did not return.

( Or so I thought.... )