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Published on 06/01/1998 All articles from this issue

Asparagus picking

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By Kerri Havnen Gordon

The Living Experiment

Every time I buy asparagus at the market, my pet raccoon Poncho comes to mind. Throughout my childhood in deeply rural Wisconsin, we had lots of animals: a squirrel named So-So, skunks named Tina and Pedro, a toad named Ralph, 13 dogs, five cats.

But Poncho was my favorite of the creatures. When I was about 8, Dad was driving home from work and came across a sad site. A mother raccoon and three of her babies had been hit by a car, leaving a lone orphan wandering anxiously among the bodies. Dad pulled his red Ford Torino to the roadside, grabbed the baby by the scuff of its neck and drove home, steering with his knees and shifting with his left hand.

Fifteen minutes later, he was walking up to our front door, his business suit bloodied, and holding at arm's length a hissing, squirming young raccoon. Mom, used to this sort of thing from Dad, just sighed, shook her head and opened the screen door for them.

We named the raccoon Poncho and decided to care for him until he could be released in the woods behind our house. He needed to be restrained so he wouldn't wander off, so we got him a collar and leashed him to the old shingled doghouse, which he gratefully claimed as his own.

Poncho soon considered Dad its new mother. He followed Dad around like a puppy and cuddled on Dad's lap while we watched Laugh-In. Poncho was especially pleased when Dad occasionally slipped him his favorite treats: marshmallows and beer. The raccoon and our beagle Daisy became great friends, nightly entertaining us by happily romping together for hours.

Soon we removed the collar, but Poncho stayed, slumbering in his doghouse most of the day. He tended to rise in the late afternoon, when he would groggily emerge from the doghouse, look for Daisy or Dad, and be constantly underfoot. We adored Poncho.

Every couple days during summer, Mom sent me to pick the wild asparagus that, for some inexplicable reason, only grew in about a 10-foot circle around Poncho's doghouse. I loved an excuse to see Poncho, but I resisted the raccoon's nocturnal tendencies. Poking my head inside his house, I would try to rouse him. He was always curled up in the corner like a kitten, his chest rising and falling in deep sleep. As I picked the requisite two fistfuls of baby asparagus, I would sing loudly, never succeeding in awakening him, but still glad to have him near.

One day a year or so later, I found the doghouse empty before my asparagus hunt. Poncho had left, and we dearly missed him.

Late one night several seasons later, I heard rustling on the roof outside my bedroom window. It was a mother raccoon and her 4 babies. The mother's markings looked just like Poncho, and I decided that our pet had been a she instead of a he. As I peered at her babies each night, she would come right up to my window, touching it with her little hand, and I would touch the glass and smile. I loved falling asleep those nights, comforted that Poncho had found a good life in our woods, and that she had cared enough to return and show us her family.

Getting asparagus isn't as fun these days. It comes in tidy rubber-banded bundles and the stalks are too thick. But mostly, there is no fun-loving raccoon named Poncho, unwittingly keeping me company while she sleeps.

Kerri Havnen Gordon writes a monthly column for the Town Crier. E-mail: Havnentoo@aol.com