Because Paul and Jamie from Mad About You are so it.
Oh hey, Leah & Brandon. What are you two doing in this blog post about favorite married couples? Weird. . . Leah's the kind of girl who will crack an egg over the shower curtain (and onto your head) when you are taking a shower and then come back minutes later to toss over a piece of toast. Buttered. She will coerce you to try some new "candy" that turns out to be turtle food. Leah calls her English mom “the Juice Box,” and her dad invented the Snickers Ice Cream Bar. The Snickers Ice Cream Bar.
And Brandon? Brandon is the Werner Herzog to her Klaus Kinski. He also, I recently learned, goes by the nickname “Pip.” Together they fake fight at the top of their lungs to convince their strait-laced neighbors they are in a Jerry-Springer type relationship. In other words, I love them.
They are also the caretakers of three baby raccoons. Raccoons who were abandoned in their infancy and need TLC before they are re released into the wild.
Is it legal to keep baby raccoons in your 300 square foot apartment? Probably not. But kicking three homeless raccoons back out on the rough streets of Provo? I’ll not abide it.
It was a lovely summer night and they invited us over for some good old neighborly raccoon-greeting.
I'll be honest. I was terrified to touch one. Tiny human hands!
Brandon opened the front door and three kitten sized raccoons fell out. He was carrying a baby bottle full of reddish stuff.
“They just woke up – they’re a little drunk.”
The three of them wobbled along like they had learned to walk (crawl?) that very day. He proceeded to feed them, one by one, the smoothie looking concoction.
Nothing will make you feel more Emersonian than seeing a man with a beautiful red beard suckle a raccoon.
After they were fed they had an even harder time walking. The fat-bellied raccoons became less scary and more cute. I bent over to pick one up. They were soft. They were nuzzly. You could grab them by their skin on their back and just toss them around like pancakes.
They also are very well trained. All three of them galloped through the grass to play follow the leader.
It was beautiful. Just four neighborly neighbors sitting around in wicker chairs on the porch, having some beards, wearing some plaid, feedin some raccoons.
And I could not have been more wrong. I totally misjudged raccoons. (I still have a vendetta out for moles – prove me wrong, internet-active mole community).
SAD SURPRISE TWIST ENDING WITH NO POPCORN:
Leah and Pip have just moved to paradise, aka, Oregon. (Just another reason for me to move to the Pearl District?)
I am in need of a new favorite married couple who are caretakers of unexpectedly well-behaved wild animals. Banjo-playing is a bonus. Is there a couple out there like this? Or am I just chasing waterfalls?
(I worked two TLC references into this post, I am incredible.)
