scott.cr
Flashlight Enthusiast
So the wife and I sleep some nights with our bedroom sliding glass door open (screen door closed); second story bedroom with a balcony type deal. We keep the interior door closed at night because our cat tends to fight with some kittens we rescued, so our cat sleeps with us and the kittens rip the rest of the house apart.
Anyhoo, at 3:31 this morning our cat FREAKS out, I mean freaks. Dead silence broken by a "ROWWWWWWR!!!!" at like 500 decibels. That tends to turn one from dead asleep to wide awake in about one nanosecond. My eyes popped open and I was face-to-face with my wife, whose eyes were also wide open. In the meantime we can hear the cat scrabbling around the room with accompanying thumps, bumps and crashes.
I keep my modified M4 in the nightstand (MN21 HOLA, 2x 18650 batteries) and pulled that baby out, her first time in a "crisis" situation. As my thumb hits the loud button I'm starting to realize that:
-I'm about to light up Surefire's baddest high-output lamp, and
-My eyes are fully dark adjusted.
SURPRISINGLY, and maybe due to adrenaline, when I kicked that baby on it didn't hurt. Everything just looked overexposed. And what did I see?
A raccoon. A freaking HUGE raccoon, like the size of a medium family dog! It tore through the screen door and was about to tear our cat a new one. But the flashlight made the little ******* rear up into the corner and flash some fang and claw. And hiss. By god it hissed!!
You really cannot imagine how evil a cornered raccoon looks while in the searing-white hotspot of a powerful light in a dark room.
So while this little bugger is cornered I'm feverishly thinking of my next move. A groomsman's gift I received at a recent wedding was a miniature baseball bat, it has "Dave & Amy May 20 2006" laser-engraved in it. I halfway seriously thought about going into mortal combat with a wild animal, wearing nothing but my smile, with a miniature baseball bat. HMMMM. I've probably had better ideas. The cat hissed. My wife was balled up into the covers, wide-eyed.
So, I chucked the bat at the raccoon. It hissed and ran out of the room through the screen door, and I heard him hit the leaves of the tree that grows up around our balcony. This morning I discovered that he also crapped on the floor (either that or I crapped in my hands and threw it at him).
Further inspection revealed some real nice claw marks in the floor where the raccoon was trying to dig out of the room. I GUESS he got onto the balcony by the tree that grows next to the balcony, and the tree's branches to touch it, but small spindly branches. I have no idea how the raccoon negotiated this climb... but CRIPES!!
Anyhoo, at 3:31 this morning our cat FREAKS out, I mean freaks. Dead silence broken by a "ROWWWWWWR!!!!" at like 500 decibels. That tends to turn one from dead asleep to wide awake in about one nanosecond. My eyes popped open and I was face-to-face with my wife, whose eyes were also wide open. In the meantime we can hear the cat scrabbling around the room with accompanying thumps, bumps and crashes.
I keep my modified M4 in the nightstand (MN21 HOLA, 2x 18650 batteries) and pulled that baby out, her first time in a "crisis" situation. As my thumb hits the loud button I'm starting to realize that:
-I'm about to light up Surefire's baddest high-output lamp, and
-My eyes are fully dark adjusted.
SURPRISINGLY, and maybe due to adrenaline, when I kicked that baby on it didn't hurt. Everything just looked overexposed. And what did I see?
A raccoon. A freaking HUGE raccoon, like the size of a medium family dog! It tore through the screen door and was about to tear our cat a new one. But the flashlight made the little ******* rear up into the corner and flash some fang and claw. And hiss. By god it hissed!!
You really cannot imagine how evil a cornered raccoon looks while in the searing-white hotspot of a powerful light in a dark room.
So while this little bugger is cornered I'm feverishly thinking of my next move. A groomsman's gift I received at a recent wedding was a miniature baseball bat, it has "Dave & Amy May 20 2006" laser-engraved in it. I halfway seriously thought about going into mortal combat with a wild animal, wearing nothing but my smile, with a miniature baseball bat. HMMMM. I've probably had better ideas. The cat hissed. My wife was balled up into the covers, wide-eyed.
So, I chucked the bat at the raccoon. It hissed and ran out of the room through the screen door, and I heard him hit the leaves of the tree that grows up around our balcony. This morning I discovered that he also crapped on the floor (either that or I crapped in my hands and threw it at him).
Further inspection revealed some real nice claw marks in the floor where the raccoon was trying to dig out of the room. I GUESS he got onto the balcony by the tree that grows next to the balcony, and the tree's branches to touch it, but small spindly branches. I have no idea how the raccoon negotiated this climb... but CRIPES!!