Kitchen Grilling

The other day I was in our kitchen grilling and had the screen door open to let the fumes out. And then I was kneeling to look out of the open screen part without the sun in my eyes, and I noticed the movement of a large grey racoon. He was lumbering like a red panda but also not unlike my cat, the one with the squirrel tail. I watched this fellow as he lumbered across the large garage roof and shimmied down the side of it to lift- I'd seen him do this before- to lift open the heavy lid of one of Toronto's standard issue garbage receptacles. I called Andre into the room, and we watched as he used his small white hands to lift the clamshell lid over himself and then sniffed at the white-bagged garbage within, but there was nothing delicious there. So then he moved on to the shorter, stouter green bin- the lid of which popped open like a present. It was full of delicious things; forgotten leftovers, food scraps and coffee grinds. We watched him do this, and pictured these things suddenly strewn across the asphalt, and Andre yelled "Hey!" so that the racoon stopped to look up. Then Andre stomped his feet so that it wandered over to the grass and reluctantly left us, behaving not unlike Lot's wife and looking over its shoulder.

The Reasons

When your neighbour does not say hi to you:

Why is that?

Maybe they are shy.

Maybe they are nervous.

Maybe they want to enjoy their cigarette.

Maybe they are watching you

and noticing the way you

do not lock the door to your belongings.

Maybe they are villainously unkind.

Maybe they were waiting

for you to say it first.

Two doors slam.