Scrappy finds a baby

So we go out for our walk this morning, and it was COLD- I began to think different about shorts/no jacket in the cold breeze.  Fortunately, I quickly realized that in these temperatures, hairy legs = jeans, so I was only HALF-cold.  Went down to Scrappy's Landing to see how high the river got with the weekend rain...

Pretty high.  So after that, and a few side trips along the way out, we hurriedly emerged back along the greenway trail.  Hurriedly, because Scrappy had the scent of something...

Now I don't know for sure if what he scented then was what we found next.  But up ahead, as you longtimers know, right past the spot where the river makes its closest approach to the trail, there's a stretch where about 50 ft of bank has slid about 4 ft out into the watery abyss.  Here, Scrappy jumped across the divide and started frantically sniffing along the edge.  I was not inclined to follow- until I saw a shadow run along the edge just ahead of him.

At first I thought it was a bulky squirrel, or more likely another of Scrappy's ground hogs.  Then it climbed, slower than a squirrel would, up a small tree.  Then I sidled across the divide to determine what it was.

Yup, it was a young Raccoon, scared half to death and hanging on for dear life. At first, he kept his little head buried against the tree.  But as I talked to him, he slowly turned to look.  Scrappy knew he was around and whined, but of course he assumed the coon had went DOWN the bank (which was about a ten-foot straight drop to the river here) instead of up the tree, adding yet another page to his legend among the forest creatures lucky enough to have encountered him.  We left the baby to its downward climb and re-entered Woodbridge.

Right in front of the office, a man in a minivan stopped to shoot a couple of pictures and drove on.  Dismissing the idea that we were photo worthy, I at first thought he was picturing the lovely flower bed in front of the office.  But within moments, I realized that the local chapter of the BDTVA (brain-dead teenage vandal association) had struck again.

And the side that the van had pictured was even less family-friendly. (Sigh) At least it was creation (of a sort) rather than destruction this time.  If only we could harness the 90% of teenage energy that goes into stupidity and channel it into something worthwhile, what a better world it would be.