Feb 1
“I keep giving her food,
why doesn’t she go away?”
Turns out that is not how you get rid of a stray cat.
Or a resident racoon.
There’s feed on the rail, lots of food.
You just reach up and pull. Tilt and spill.
I’m getting way too wonderfully plump
to slither away in escape like this.
Why do you keep interrupting my dinner?
Eating is an every day business.
It’s a mammal thing.
The porch light did not bother him,
nor my flashlight, not the camera flash.
He was on a mission to feed,
having already eaten, it seemed, his entire family
and become fat as a bear cub.
The technique is, to spare himself acrobatics: tilt and spill.
Tilt a little, spill a little more,
then dine at ease along the rail.
I slammed the back door, four feet from him,
and he dove over the rail, to hide under the house,
for almost three minutes.