CATEGORY: MRS. ANDERSON

We were not the only ones beset upon by raccoons.  Our Japanese neighbors, Setsu and Hiroshi, kept exotic Japanese animals, including a cat and a “royalty only” dog who’s lower jaw and teeth protruded permanently beyond its upper jaw and teeth.  Hiroshi was a professor of orthodontics at the nearby dental college, so we thought maybe the dog was the result of some misguided experiment in one of his classes.  Or sometimes we wondered if all royalty in Japan looked the same way.

Some of their Japanese animals were chickens.  These chickens bore no resemblance to the chickens of my youth: sturdy, hefty clucking and crowing giants.  NO!  They were indeed rare fowl.  They were delicate glamorous creatures who had to go to the beauty salon at least once a week to have their long graceful tail feathers brushed and curled.  They were kept locked in a special kind of protective pen of wire and solar cloth, lest wind or rain muss their locks or cause them to catch a chill.

One night about midnight, we heard Setsu screaming.  We thought Hiroshi was beating her.  We got up and rushed outside.  Hiroshi must have been gone because she came running over to our house.  Bob went back with her, but it was too late.  An astute raccoon had picked the intricate lock on the hen house gate and had made off with one of the gourmet chickens.

They changed the lock on the gate.  It did not deter these expert safe crackers.  A few nights later, one of them opened that lock also and killed all the rest of the chickens, eating only one of them.