8.05.2010

Experiment: Raccoon Handling



Is it wrong to pick a favorite married couple?

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.)

9 comments :

Miss K$ said...

I love this post. I am going to miss pip and leah. I do already. I"ll be on the lookout for banjo players in the mean time.

casey elizabeth said...

phill plays the mandolin. we have two kittens, one who plays fetch. his beard is reddish. just sayin...

hanner said...

that video made me laugh out loud. the raccoons make noises that sound like they should be in an anime movie.

Nicolas Frisby said...

My new roommate made me watch a King of Queens episode about this. If their solution were to work for you, you would have to avoid calling the couple you like the least, fail to find new couples in a hardware store, and finally cave and call the annoying couple, only to discover that they've been hiding your perfect, doppelgänger couple from you all along. Then you'd go to great lengths to find their number. Good luck to you!

becca said...

their little jibbery noises!!!

oregon seriously IS paradise. i need to get there soon.

this is the best.

Kori said...

If we lived closer we could audition to be your new favs. And, no banjo playing here...we don't have cute raccoons but we have 3 kids that act like wild animals...and I can throw eggs. ;) Love your blog. Always cracks me up!

Brandon Pipkin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brandon Pipkin said...

Friends! We are such terrible friends for leaving and not hanging out with you more. While we are happy frolicking in the woods of Oregon, searching for wild animals to adopt, we miss the wild animals of Provo and most of all, our friends! We hope you are well and when we visit Provo, we'll make sure to stop by!

Leah Raynes Pipkin said...

Brandon just told me you posted about our babies! Oh my goodness you are so funny, and if I were to make a blog post about my favorite married couple, you guys would definitely be the headlining band. I'm so sad that we moved so far away, but there's plenty of space here for other awesome couples. Oh, I miss you guys so much... If you guys need a week or weekend escape, please come visit! We'll make it worth your while... :)