INNER-LOOP LIFE

By CYNTHIA RAMON

LONG after my family has retired, we move toward one another in the velvet darkness. It has become a ritual I repeat each evening.

This clandestine meeting would bring disapproval from my Montrose area neighbors, but it delivers a shiver of pleasure to me. I stand silently at the French door of my kitchen anticipating the masked form that appears noiselessly on my back deck. My friend Ray Ban, a raccoon, arrives.

Ray Ban is part of the new class of homeless created by the development that has sprung up all around me -- the native species of raccoons, possums and other creatures that were here first. My anger at their loss is matched only by my fear that soon all of our urban wildlife will disappear.

We meet in silence, my special friend and I. Ray Ban is a round, gray, fur ball with black circles around glittering, beady eyes, a sibling in a recent litter of raccoons that has staked out my yard as his personal territory. He crawls beneath the fence, round belly flattened to accommodate the narrow dirt-floor opening. Rising from his entry way, he morphs back into his pudgy body and ambles toward the shiny metal bowl of Meow Mix ignored by my fat felines.

I've placed the kibble and a purple plastic water bowl, its edges gnawed by teething puppies, at the edge of the deck between a giant terra cotta frog, brimming with crimson impatiens and a pie-shaped bed of creamy antique roses and wild herbs. His tiny eyes dart around the deck, his shiny black snout lifts to the scents of the night and his ears twitch momentarily, antennae to detect lurking enemies. Although he gazes in my direction, his poor vision only discerns a vague form as I remain still inside the double glass door.

Unobserved, I watch him remove tiny morsels with nimble paws. He dips each bit in the basin of water, a substitute for the saliva his mouth does not produce. He pauses between bites and moves away from the bowls, alert for intruders as he indulges in my handouts.

The new city of Houston trash cans sport lids that cinch snugly over their massive black plastic bodies, denying access to sumptuous remains. The old metal cans were reliable. After sturdy trash collectors carelessly tossed them against the truck once or twice, the lids would cease to match the lip of the can, allowing sharp little claws to pry the cover away and expose the contents. Many a meal was scrounged from neighborhood refuse. But that was a time before garbage collectors became sanitation engineers and eventually became obsolete. The little representatives of wildlife are fighting the same extinction.

Our affair does have its detractors. One neighbor complains raccoons eat his orchids. I suggest he put out Meow Mix. Another likens them to rats. I remind him they sometimes eat mice. My neighbors remind me that raccoons may be cute but they carry rabies.

I am an educated woman. I know these facts. I also know nocturnal animals appear during the daylight hours when they become ill. I am alert to this.

Generations of raccoons and possums frolicked through our streets before we were recognized as "inside the loop" and our little neighborhood became a trendy urban enclave. No known cases of rabid raccoons have been reported here.

I look around me at the 1930s-vintage bungalows and imagine the space that must have separated the neat pastel cottages before automobiles and jobs spawned an influx of residents. Some homes still have a walkway leading from the sidewalk through the center of the yard to the front door. They remind me there was a time when more people walked and rode buses and fewer owned cars. Walkways from the driveway to the front door came as homes were built for families with cars.

Raccoons and possums nibbled their way through vegetable gardens while fireflies flittered above them. The fireflies are gone, but the raccoons and possums remain, their hold more perilous than they realize. They return to their habitat, imprinted at birth, to continue their lineage. No one told them their territory had been exchanged for cement courtyards. No one explained the high price of progress.

Gentrification has changed life around me. I've watched as reckless builders gulp up green areas and regurgitate cement. Slick and trendy townhomes on zero-lot lines have replaced traditional yards of trees, grass and shrubs that provided a natural habitat.

The loss runs deeper than the raccoons and possums I continue to nurture. The eclectic neighborhood I moved into, filled with artists, immigrants, alternative lifestyles and the elderly, has been my natural habitat. Observing how people live and interact, reproduce their culture and weave it into the urban tapestry, has sustained me. My Montrose-area mosaic which quietly accepted differences is crumbling into a colorless paste that plods toward ubiquity. Suburban builders and trophy homes mimic suburban sterility. Iron fences define property lines. Openness recedes.

I write about and teach cultural diversity. I try to nurture respect for the immense cast of characters that populates our multicultural city. Just as I plant vivid penta, hibiscus and butterfly weed for the Monarch butterflies and hummingbirds that flock to my gardens, I hope I plant the seeds of respect for individual human differences. I place plump gray and white striped sunflower seeds in shallow bowls for the cardinals and jays so they will continue to return. That is my day life.

In my night life I am part of an underground resistance force aiding those no longer welcomed in our changing inner-city landscape. I provide kibble and water for the night stalkers as my orange-striped tabby cat watches lazily from her perch on the worn cushion of a deck chair. Harmony prevails.

We need each other, this stealthy bandit and I. He depends on the food I set out. I depend on him for assurance that some natural cycle prevails amid the soulless progress. Perhaps one evening I will revolt and place bright disposable bowls of Meow Mix on every porch on my block. But for now, I continue to look forward to our late-night rendezvous with the delicious anticipation of a secret affair. I would like to think he does, too.

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2002

Answers

...as I remain still inside the double glass door.

That is one skinny woman!

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2002

Nah, I'm fat and I can remain inside the storm door when I watch the racoon and possum feed on the back step. (Yes, BF, they have VERY strong teeth, lol!)

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2002