Lan, how stupid can you get?

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” Albert Einstein.

Corollary: Stupidity knows no bounds!

And every non-stupid people knows that!

Apparently, not yours truly here, so let me count the ways… …

To begin, the photo shows a raccoon in a trap. I have a long standing problem with rodents that can once in a while find a way to get into the attic of my house.

This new breach happened a couple weeks ago. I looked but could not find its location. So I decided to trap the intruder. I set the trap on Wednesday and sure enough got a raccoon in the act. It’s a quite large one.

Stupidity #1: I was “careful” and equipped myself with a broom as weapon, and went up to the roof of my house (should I count that as Stupidity #0? One non-stupid friend of mine told me that sure was Stupidity #0, to operate on the roof of a house at my age.)

But never mind that… in my celebration of victory, I poked the trap a few times with my broom stick.

Guess what, a “huge” raccoon jumped out of the blue, near the trap, ready and willing for war.

Stupidity #2: If I knew better, I would avoid eye contact and retreat.

But no, this dumb guy looked the underestimated adversary right in the eyes, readying the broom to “intimidate” the “enemy.”

Stupidity #3: Found out later that the broomstick is hollow, can’t really hurt anyone.

I can’t really blame the mother getting furious seeing this guy messing with her baby!

She charged like a toro, but faster!

I whacked but of course, missed. She was gnawing on my left foot above the ankle… I was screaming, kicking bla bla bla… to no avail.

Thank heaven, she got enough and retreated back to be near the trap, a couple of meters away.

Then came the second wave, before I could get up off my butt on the roof.

This time, she went higher to taste the muscle of my left calf… more screaming, kicking bla bla bla... for naught!

This huge lady raccoon really knew what she was doing, she retreated again in case there were another idiot like me attacking her baby in the trap.

The third wave came when she felt the baby is ok, charging again, going higher to my knee!

That time, I was up with my “hollow” broomstick. Scared half to death, I whacked , and missed again! Damn!

She was preparing to come again…

The fourth attack came fast as lightning. I was lucky and hit her side with a thud, similar to hitting a bag of rice. That just slowed her a few milliseconds, and she got madder.

Her face was inches away from my face.

In desperation, I push her face away with my bare left hand, clearly remember that my thumb was inside her mouth, near her big shiny tooth, kicking and screaming…

At this point, I think my “lucky” star chimed in, and she decided to cease fire.

I was able to get down from the roof, get help to the emergency department of South Miami hospital.

Thankfully, I live in a well developed country where hospitals are well equipped to deal with life threatening events like the one I just encountered. In exchange for the excellent modern care, bills the size of the US national debt will arrive in waves to be paid.

I was given antibiotic, a tetanus and rabies shots as precautionary measures. The real star of the treatment was called immune globulin injections around all the bite locations, and there were many of them.

I am telling you, that is the definition of pain.

All my wounds were disinfected multiple times with all kinds of colorful liquids and nicely draped.

The deep laceration between the thumb and pointing finger of my left hand was stitched by a skilled nurse.

I was sent home with instructions to return for wound check, and to receive three more rabies vaccine the last one of which is September 2nd.

Thank heaven I had no nightmare that night… simply because I could not sleep a wink, up all night reviewing in slow motion visions of the nice lady coon’s face near mine with teeth resembling Jaws’.

The next day, a professional wild animal person came to retrieve the trapped raccoon and charged me a nice $149.00 for his service.

I recall my days of youth, when my Dad took me to see Tarzan and Jungle Jim movies in the 50's. These two heroes always had hand to hand combats with big lions, leopards, alligators and so on... and they always emerged victorious.

Yeah rite! Don’t you believe that myth.

So… can stupidities be rewarded?

I recently watched an old (read ancient) movie “Angel on the Amazon, of the year 1948” in which a lovely, beautiful lady, encountered a wounded black panther attacking her husband, mauling him in the Amazon jungle. She was able to kill the black panther, stabbing it multiple times with a knife to save her husband, but was profoundly affected mentally. She never aged since that day… for decades... having found the secret of eternal youth.

Ha! Just like that, I will remain in my current state for decades, not age another day. I’ll take that.

Thank you, my beautiful lady raccoon for the acquaintance. I am truly sorry for your baby. I was stupid!

Stupid from Miami...