The Fence Incident

Today I encountered the most awkward death I've had to deal with by far.

A raccoon, you see, had gotten stuck in a fence and passed away.
Reaction: Poor raccoon, go to backyard fence, remove raccoon, carry on.

Life: "Oh no, it's Friday, it's hot... let's make this more complicated..."
Me: "But... Is that really necessary?"
Life: "Yes. Most definitely."

I felt like I was dealing with one of those little brain teasers where you're trying to remove the metal ring from an odd entanglement involving small rope and wooden sticks. Except this brain teaser involved a dead raccoon instead of a metal ring, tall grass and weeds instead of rope, and then a large, tall, warped wooden fence.... plus then add in an exceptionally large swarm of flies along with half a dozen wasps surrounding you while you complete this task.

Ooo fun...

Now, I understand that people generally complain saying "I don't get paid enough to put up with...blah blah blah..."

But SERIOUSLY

I do NOT get paid enough to, not only pick up dead things, but also get stung half a dozen times by angry wasps in the process.

I shake my fist at you minimum wage.

I radio the other officers asking what to do with the wasps (maybe there's a trick to getting rid of them? ...I don't really know what I was going for...)

"No trick... That's just part of the job that we have to deal with."
"...Oh..."
"-Wait, well... are you allergic to bees?"

...just say yes. Then someone else will probably offer to come and deal with this. You don't know for sure, people develop allergies all the time. Maybe you ARE allergic to bees and you've recently developed an allergy that you're unaware of! Getting stung IS really uncomfortable. So you COULD be allergic! Best not to take the risk.... just say yes...

"No. Not allergic. I.. just really don't enjoy getting stung..."

So here's the setting. I tried to think of how I could best explain it; turns out that I'm using pictures more than I thought I would. But give me a break, I'm using Paint here.

Alright, so this warped fence had created an unfortunate gap between the boards, much more narrow than above, but hopefully you get the idea. From what I could tell, some poor raccoon was strolling along the top of the fence and then had a misstep or something and managed to fall between the gap in the boards. The poor thing had it's body on one side and its head on the other.

Sad for the raccoon.

Terrifying for me.

What this means is that not only am I fending off wasps to pick up a dead raccoon (trust me, if I had any say in the matter I would've let them keep it), but I have to slide this thing up the fence vertically because the wedge that has been created is not wide enough for the head to be pulled through horizontally. It was kind of like when you see a kid with his head stuck in a banister and he can't back out... except it was a dead raccoon head...

Eventually I did manage to successfully remove the raccoon and remained free from wasp stings.

Needless to say, it was disgusting.

However, I did have some help. With all the trouble I was having (the darn thing was really stuck in there) the homeowner asked if he could do anything and I suggested that he try to pull on the warped fence in attempts to to widen the gap as much as he could to at least remove some pressure. What I neglected to realize at the time was, as I finally managed to slide the raccoon up the fence I was dealing with the weighty lump of its body.... the homeowner, on the other hand, got to watch a dead raccoon head float up the edge of his fencing from the other side.

Oh goodness, I couldn't help but laugh. But he was a good sport about it. He thanked me incessantly, promised to fix the gap in the fence, and proclaimed a new appreciation for his paper-pushing desk job.