Talk about blow hards....

[hotwine]

O Carnack... you'd apppreciate my neighbor's
tale of a few weeks ago:

He noticed the metal plate he uses as a rain cap on the chimney of his brick pit kept winding up on the ground. So at dusk one evening, he made sure the plate was covering the chimney and sat back on his patio to watch and wait with a pair of binoculars. Before long, the plate began to slide to one side, then dropped off onto the ground.... and two pointed little ears poked up above the rim, then little black eyes and a button nose, till finally out crawled a big ol' momma 'coon, followed by a single young'un.

When they had sauntered off to find supper, he went over and checked the inside of his pit and found she had made a comfy nest in there (and really trashed the place out in the process). So he covered the chimney with a heavy weight that they couldn't move, then spent the next morning cleaning up their mess.

Probably the same family whose young'un bit me last year.