I'm gonna eat ya!!

One of the many jobs our small 16 man municipal fire department was to do maintenance on all 138 hydrants in our district. This included greasing,sanding,tagging and painting each hydrant with a high gloss oil based red paint. After doing this most of the day we would all come back to the station, clean the equipment, and throw the empty paint cans in a dumpster.

At night the person who had the watch was required to take the garbage out, the way was poorly lit and one had to be careful not to become injured. On this particular night a raccoon had been rooting around in the dumpster and had stuck his head down inside a paint can. When the watchman had thrown the garbage into the dumpster it must have startled the coon. The coon began hissing and growling while it became airborne, I was told it’s entire face was red, even by moonlight the color was easy to discern. The rest of us were about 30 yards away and on the second floor of the department when we heard a shrill scream made by the watchman. We all ran outdoors to see what the commotion was and was able to catch a glimpse of the red faced coon. After learning what had happened I laughed so hard my jaws began to hurt. Once in a lifetime.