Coons don’t help much trying to make ends meet, let me tell you! Let them
visit you and you’ll wish you hadn’t. It wasn’t long before we realized we needed
to be coonproof. A case of shutting the restaurant door after the coons have
been there, but better that than never shutting the door at all.
We know about coons — of course we do — this island is full of them. We
know they like grout banks; they’re one of their favorite places to camp out. So
we build a restaurant right on a grout bank. The coons couldn’t believe their eyes
— what luck! Ready for dinner?
Our little building was far from tight. There were plenty of open spaces to
come through — under the eaves, in the exhaust fan with no screen, even in the
door. No problem for two coons bent on a mug-up.
We had been working the place for a month or so and I went down to the
Sands one morning to start cooking stuff for dinner that night. It must have been
a Monday, what with the phenomenal mess that met my eyes when I got there. I
can see it all now — just what went on in there.
Those two coons snuffeled around the building, right up to the exhaust fan.
Ah ha!
“We can get in right here, Cappy, and it sure smells good!”
Wiggling in between the fan blades, in they came, right beside the fryer full of
oil. They dipped their little paws in that first and then trotted over to the steak pit
to rummage around in there. It has occurred to you, has it not, that fry oil and
ashes all over eight little feet made a plain trail to follow.
A trail all over the prep tables, into the sink and over the stove. There was an
oily mess over on the table in front of the picture window. It looked like they had
a scuffle about who was going to get in the cupboard first, the next stop.
The cupboard was a big, deep set of shelves from floor to ceiling where I
kept my dishes, pots and pans and stock for cooking. It was full of bags of flour
and sugar, cans of cocoa, salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, soy sauce,
Worcestershire sauce, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, vanilla, chocolate
squares and chocolate chips.
Those two coons got settled in there, on the shelf with all the food, and dug
in. They bit the tops off the ketchup squeezers (ate them), unscrewed the tops
off the vanilla (drank that) and mustard (threw that), opened the cans of cocoa
(ate that) and baking powder, poured out the salt, tore open the flour and sugar
and ate all the chocolate squares and chips. Once they had tried everything, they
scaled it down on the floor, spattering everything all over everywhere.
Tired of all the work wrecking the cupboard, and chock full, they waddled off
across the side counter and, as a parting shot, paused long enough to leave a
turd or two in the silverware box, before climbing the outside wall and squeezing
through the eaves. How’d you like to be greeted by all that when you went to
work one day?
“Well!” I fumed to myself as I scrubbed and mopped and washed every dish,
pot and pan and piece of silverware, plus had to go the store before I could even
get started for the day. “You two coons have made a big mistake. I’m not going
to have this in my kitchen every day! Better you had stuck with your clams and
mussels than mess on this old lady!”
Now some people make half pets out of wild coons. They leave food out on
their doorstep so they will come there and they can watch them eat and get fat.
Other people don’t want coons around at all. Coons are always getting into
stuff — garbage cans, sheds and, worse, henhouses and duck pens. They get
brazen, climb right on the doorstep and would love to come right in if you let
them — and have your supper and the cat for dessert.
Coons are no dummies. When they find a good place to have a mug-up, they
will return there again and again, with the whole family. Sure enough, they
showed up again the next night — to a big surprise. Since coons are hardly in
danger of extinction — on the contrary, they’re all over the place — I had no
compunction about ordering up the firing squad for those two. Old Ducka and
one of the old man’s boys were keen to go on a hunt, and lay in wait for them
that night. For those coons, that was it.
There was no way we could have let that go on and try to run a restaurant.
People would not be happy with a coon turd on their fork. We stopped up all the
eaves, screened in the fan and made sure the doors were closed.
The only other problem we had with coons, was if we left the garbage full of
lobster shells overnight — they were quick to take advantage of that. We made it
a point to go to the dump every night after work (back in the old days when you
could go to the dump whenever you wanted to) and didn’t see any more coons.
Good for us — and healthier for them!