“BEANS”
By John McGondel
7-04-1975

Overnight it seemed, the trees had enshrouded themselves in their orange and red overcoats. Fall had come once again to New England, a time of color, of fireplaces, and of kinship. But on this cloudy, windy afternoon, I felt none of those things. What I felt was alone. As alone as the very leaves that I watched, as they were being torn from that which had nourished them, only to then be swept away on unknown journeys, by an uncaring, non-judgmental wind. For I was thinking of another journey. And as I sat alone in my empty room, my ears fancied a certain soft trilling sound, one that I had come to know, and love, and miss. A sound not unlike a whistled, cat's purring.

Thinking back now, I know that I shall always regard the meeting of the owner of that noise, as being one of the most bizarre coincidences to have affected my life. Animals in general had always been a part of my life, and I'd taken in everything from snakes to rabbits when I was younger. Reptiles, mammals, and birds were all familiar to me, but as I grew up, these things somehow got forced into the background. I still of course spent any time that I could in the woods, camping and fishing, but had inevitably gotten caught up in life's mainstream of schooling, working, and girls.

In 1975, at twenty-one years old, I was married and figured I'd pretty much worked myself out. I was settled comfortably into my own little niche in life. Or so I thought. I thought of myself as being rather mature for my age, and was a bit proud that I'd made it through adolescence fairly evenly. I was not afraid to be on my own, and although I did miss my parents, I still figured that I'd taken the leaving of home in a grown-up way. Observing others of my age group in mental turmoil, confused, or in a constant search for themselves left me feeling more secure. I had no idea that those older than I, who knew me, were just sitting back, waiting for what they knew had to come.

Then came a strange series of events which, through contact with a seemingly harmless animal, were to bring me to a greater understanding of myself and of those I loved. A creature of the night woods, wild and beautiful. A raccoon.

Now, it is true that raccoons are plentiful animals, thriving in towns as well as forests and that they are accepted much as one accept rabbits or squirrels. Indeed they seem to prosper when people are a part of their environment. But they are still not "known" to people. Very seldom does any person’s exposure to a “coon” go beyond that of a carcass passed on the highway, or an unseen nuisance at the garbage can. But to me a raccoon was to become an integral part of my transition to adulthood…

I was working for a furniture company at the time, and one of my co-workers was a woman whose husband owned a tree cutting company. So it was that one day in March I was sharing a coffee break with fellow employees, when this women Marcia jokingly asked me if I wanted a pet.

Of course I was mildly interested and asked her what kind of pet: "A puppy, a guinea pig?"

"No" she answered, "A raccoon", and giggled. I froze. To this day I remember her face as she realized how serious I had become.

"Where" I asked her, my voice a croak. "How much?" I was growing steadily more excited. It seemed that Marcia's husband had cut down a huge tree with a chain saw the night before and had unknowingly killed the mother of a family of raccoons living inside. Now he had four baby 'coons and wasn't quite sure what to do with them. Being an impatient person, I telephoned her husband immediately. Then I left work, picked my wife up, and drove the forty or so miles out into the country. And there they were, about eight inches long with scrawny three inch tails. A strange yet soothing sort of purring-whistling noise radiated out from the basket. Needless to say, I fell in love with them and took two of them home.

Paul was in a state of ecstasy with his, which he promptly named Pluto. Mine I named Beans and took him home. They sound cute and indeed they were, but nevertheless, they were by no means tame. It was a full week before we could touch them, and longer still before they could be handled freely and without apprehension. I bought a pair of leather gloves to hold them as we nursed them with baby bottles and warm milk (much to everyone's amusement).

For many weeks I was in a state of wonderment at my good fortune. Imagine a baby raccoon in my apartment, ten miles from Boston. At the time it seemed like a small miracle, although now it seems more of a prophecy. My wife and I bought every book we could find on 'coons and studied them. We learned their eating habits, how they sleep, play, and even how they fight. We became authorities on them.

It did not take us long to realize that 'coons are extremely smart animals, in many ways far surpassing dogs and cats. The closest I could come in comparison would be a chimpanzee. If we opened a cabinet or door for something in particular, Beans grew to know why. His powers of association were tremendous. He quickly found where the trash was, even after we put it in a cabinet. After watching me once get something from the refrigerator he knew where the source of food was. He found the source of water in the apartment easily enough by following us as we refilled his water dish.

After about a month, Beans was fully accustomed to our house. And our home was accustomed to beans. We had to "Beans-proof" everything. Anything not tied down had to be secured. More than once we were startled by the crashing sound of something in another room. But Beans would be under the bed, well away from the disturbance, just sitting there as if to say: "Well you certainly don't think I did it, do you?" He got into everything. He swung on the drapes, ate cigarette butts, he even climbed into the aquarium. More than once my wife would open a drawer to the stove to get some onions and find Beans lying there blissfully.

Our world slowly began to revolve around Beans, and after about the second month, we stopped leaving him in his cage at night. Instead we kept him in a spare room. After the third month, he was firmly seated in our family unit. He was as attached to us as we were to him. Once he adapted to the leash, we took him with us everywhere. We would take him for a nightly walk about town and Beans was welcome at all of the shops that we frequented. At the deli, the manager's eyes would light up at the sight of us three, and Beans always got a free handout. This of course he enjoyed and came to look forward to it every night. He was also a big hit at the pizza parlor (and the pizza parlor was a big hit with Beans).

It got to be a routine with us to take a long, slow walk every evening. We did this without fail from May 'till September on the many warm nights with quite a few people out. Certain regulars used to wait for us to come by, and more than a few times our picture was taken, once to be published in the local newspaper. Cars would sometimes stop on the street to stare at us, and everyone asked us the same questions, which we more or less got used to, the most frequent being: "Is that a raccoon?" This was invariably followed by: "Do they make good pets?" And: "Where did you get him?" We answered these questions and others seemingly hundreds of times.

Beans was an accomplished thief, frequently stalking my wife's pocketbook. He would grab a pack of gum and take off at a gallop towards safety. You could be holding him, either petting him or talking to him, and he would seem to be paying unwavering attention to you while he was robbing something from your pocket, a true bandit, complete with mask.

We gradually changed our walks to the lake area instead, it having fifty acres of peaceful woods to walk through. These woods were teeming with rabbits, squirrels, birds, and other wildlife. People would fish in the pond, occasionally catching a trout or bass. This made for many pleasant walks, and we spent countless warm summer evenings, strolling through the woods. Beans of course enjoyed this tremendously, romping tirelessly through woods and streams.

Any warnings that I felt, I shoved to the back of my mind with the attitude that these adventures would help the little animal to give vent to his wild urgings, instead of adding to them. I thought of those times in the woods as fulfilling a need in him, a necessary supplement to his life with us. I set reason and logic aside, trying my best to provide for his happiness.

Too many people had been telling me that raccoons get surly and grouchy as they mature, and that I would eventually have to turn him loose. I would shake my head, secure that Beans would stay with us his lifetime, which from books I'd read figured to be about fifteen years. And so as the summer progressed, I ignored the inevitable signs of restlessness that Beans showed.

It is odd that a person can rationalize just about anything if s/he wants to. When people would ask me what I planned to do when it came time to turn the animal loose. I would change the subject. When he wanted to go, I would let him. That was it. Or so I led everyone, including myself, to believe. But of course I also figured he would never leave. . .

Without realizing it, I had become too emotionally attached to the raccoon. I think that my wife noticed this but said nothing. Likewise my parents. I played with Beans, I fed him, and shampooed him (a very grim chore). We would read, or listen to music in front of the fire with Beans curled up with us. He also had his own favorite spots to relax, like up on the shelves on the stereo speakers, or on a warm radiator, as he very much preferred looking down on us from somewhere, probably from his tree-security instinct. He would lay there in apparent thought on his perches, sometimes for hours. He seemed to be watching us, studying us as he studied everything else in his life. Every single thing was of interest to Beans. He would investigate a single thumbtack or paper clip for many minutes at a time. Visitors were always thoroughly checked out before being accepted, after which they were seldom left alone. Beans would creep up and suddenly pounce on an unsuspecting hand or foot, latching onto a thumb or big toe which he would try to drag away. And if the owner of the thumb or toe should try to apprehend the little troublemaker, he would retreat backwards in short jumps, his head to the ground, the rest of him all puffed out, just daring you to try to pursue him. Which if you did try to do, would send him scurrying for safety, cursing you for calling his bluff. Naturally, he was a sensation with our relatives and friends, and we began to feel as though they came as much to see Beans as to see us!

There was only one time that I can ever remember Beans actually being moody. That was when I decided to introduce a baby squirrel to our household. I had taken it from my Uncle Larry's cellar where a family of them had been ruining the place. When I got there Larry was ready to kill them, but instead of killing them, I had decided to capture them and relocate them, keeping one to try and tame it, figuring I could always let it go free later. It was only five inches long with a six inch fluffy tail. Well, Beans did not like the squirrel, no way, no how. We would repeatedly catch that raccoon trying to scoop the little squirrel out of the aquarium that we used for its cage. We would scold Beans which just added to Beans' dislike for the animal. We tried to get them to be compatible, but it was no use, and it took a while for it to occur to us that this animosity was really jealousy. I had not thought an animal capable of that emotion up until then. We had to keep them in separate rooms like quarrelsome kids until I finally let the squirrel go free.

By then it was rather late in the summer and we had had Beans for almost six months, during which time I had derived an immeasurable amount of happiness. But Beans had been growing more and more restless. Much as I tried to ignore this, I was finally forced to face up to the reality. It finally got so we had to lock him in his room. Then it got to where he would tear the room apart trying to get out. I thought of an article I had read where this raccoon had chewed its own leg off to escape a steel-jawed trap. I felt at a loss for an answer. I started letting him loose at night to roam our apartment, where, unsupervised all night, he was ruining our furniture and possessions. I still tried to ignore it, to shove it aside, telling myself that he would get over it.

But finally something happened which I could not ignore. One night when I came home from work, my wife was sitting quietly alone at the end of the sofa. I asked her where Beans was and all she said was: "Locked in the back room." Hesitantly I asked her why, and she slowly held out her hand to reveal an ugly bite-wound. I stared in disbelief and she told me: "John, he bit me. I was only trying to feed him and he bit me."

I was silent for a minute, then said: "Eileen, honey, he probably thought you were stealing his food, even a dog would snap at you to guard his food. I mean, you can't expect an animal to lose his instincts. Especially a wild animal. He needs those instincts to survive. What chance would he stand in the woods if we took away his instincts? He would be defenseless." She just looked at me.

Then I thought about what I had just said. Beans needed his instincts intact in order to survive in the wilds. And in the wild is where I always said I would put him, when he chose to go. And wasn't he choosing it now? I sat down to think. I listened to the ticking of the clock's pendulum. It sounded so loud. Finally I got up and went to the back room and opened the door to where Beans sat defensively in the corner.

"Come on" I said, my eyes hot. He resisted me, even snarled at me, but I picked him up. I rubbed his head, his ears and scratched his belly, which he loved. Then I took his collar off. As I walked to the door I looked over at my wife, but she would not look back, and Beans and I left.

I walked with Beans briskly down to the pond and up into the woods, and there I stopped. Beans ran to the bushes and, without pausing, ran into them. I turned around and walked back through the woods. I thought I heard him scuffling behind me for a few yards, but I did not turn around. I just kept walking, faster and faster, until I was running; I ran all of the way home.

As I walked into my apartment, my wife came over to me. I stared at her, my eyes overflowing, my face hot and wet. She kissed me and we just sat on the sofa, holding hands, not talking.

Friends came over still after that day and asked where Beans was. I just matter-of-factly said: "Oh, him? He took off." They would say that they knew that this would happen. I just said: "Yeah, I suppose."

And so Beans the raccoon left us and I got to do a lot of thinking. About love. It is funny how love is. There are so many different kinds. Like the kind of love that parents have for their children. The same children who love them back, but still have to leave someday. The parents know this and try to understand it, even as their own parents did. But that does not make it any easier.

I thought about the two people sitting home at night in their house, alone. My parents. And I realized that although there are many different kinds of love, they are also all the same. Love is the opposite of selfishness, and after many years of life, and countless experiences, it took a ten pound ball of fur to make me realize it.