My dad had 2 when he was young - one was an utter terror and didn’t stay in the house long (I still haven’t figured out if that meant he left for the wild or grandma made supper of em). The other stuck around a good long time - I have three stories on him. 1) everytime he saw a laundry basket full of clothes he felt it was his duty to properly distribute them from the basket, 2) he would climb up on the back of the couch and attack my aunt’s hair from the rear, and 3) (with independent confirmation) he would go down to the tavern periodically and scratch at the back door - he was collared so everyone knew him - and they would serve him bowels of beer. When he was full he’d “waddle” back home - the funny thing for me is everyone I talked to about this used the term “waddle” never stumbled, walked, staggered, meandered, slowly moved, nothing else - it was always ‘waddled’. I’d love to have met that coon.
The coon I had was from a neighbor who had it from just a baby. Well he let it have the run of the neighborhood and was trashing people’s garbage cans. He brought it to me to have when people threatened to shoot it as I had a big cage I wasn’t using at the time.
Once I put that coon into the cage he was instantly vicious. To get him out I would put on leather work gloves and then welding gloves. I’d open the cage. Stick a hand in. And when he chomped down on my hand, I’d grab him, take him into my room and let him go.
He’d snap and snarl for a good long time. As long as he came to me, he was the most friendly pet I’d ever had. But when I came up to him, I never knew what kind of mood he was in.
One of my friends would talk me into taking the coon with us in the car. It really freaked out the hitch hiker we picked up. My friend knew the owner of a record store and one weekend night we went over there. I was waiting in the car with the coon, when he came out and said the owner said it was OK to bring the coon into the store.
So here I go into the record store with the coon in my arms.
After a while he got up on my shoulders and was pacing back and forth. Then he went to get down, down my stomach. I stuck my arms out to grab him and he bit me right in the throat.
I grabbed him in the center of his back and yanked him off my throat. He was like a buzz saw by then. He was going for both my arms and my chest. I think his skin was loose enough that he could spin around three times.
I knew there was no way I could let him get loose in that store. So here I went. Out of that store as fast as I could go. With that spinning buzz saw of a coon trying his best to get away from me. I threw him back into the car and got in there with him. Somehow I got him back to the house and in the cage.
Well. You would of thought I would of learned something from all of that. No. Not this kid. Again I got talked into taking the coon with us in the car. But this time the car broke down right around the corner from the house. I let the windows down and once coon got out of the car, with a little persuasion. I convinced him to escape to the bayou, we were right next to.
My friend bottle fed 2 coons years before that. When they were small, neighborhood dogs picked on them and they never forgot. When they were full grown, they went after those dogs. One would prance down the center of the road. When a dog would go after him, he would be attached from behind by the other coon. And then both coons would be tearing up that dog. That didn’t last for too long before both of his coons were shot.