A few weeks ago, Whitney showed up to Chi Alpha’s weekly meeting with a large bandage wrapped around her hand. I asked her what had happened, and she told me of a ferocious raccoon attack while walking along Lake Lagunita.
This was not surprising to me. Raccoons are evil. All right-thinking people know this in their marrow.
Sure, they look cute with their little paws and their masked face, but even Satan seems to be a beautiful angel
. No — raccoons are as evil as a subhuman mammal can be. And given that raccoons roam freely
across campus, something like this was inevitable.
Realizing that I was sitting on entertainment gold, I asked Whitney to keep silent until the announcement time, when I would interview her and allow her to regale the entire group with her story.
After worship, I called her to the front and asked her what had happened. As she held her bandaged hand high and said, “I was bitten by a raccoon,” Desirae cried out, “I knew those things were dangerous!” A hush fell over the room as she began to tell her tale.
She and her roommate had been walking around Lake Lag when Whitney noticed a raccoon moving about in the bushes. She turned to her roommate to point it out and saw a flurry of motion out of the corner of her eye. The next thing she knew, she was being lunged at by an apparently carnivorous raccoon. She fended it off, suffering a grievous hand wound in the process.
Her roommate, a pre-med student, gave her some quick treatment and then she headed over to Vaden health center for further medication.
At this point, you could have heard a pin drop in the Chi Alpha meeting. Every student there was thinking of the many times they had seen raccoons rambling across campus, looking at Whitney’s bandaged hand, and thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
At least until Whitney burst out laughing and said, “And you believe me?”
I said, “Bwah?”
Whitney said, “I was making that up. I tripped and hurt my hand. My roommate said that was too boring and that I should make up a better story. So far everyone I’ve told has believed me.”
The room erupted in laughter.
For those keeping score:
Whitney: 1
Glen: 0
Raccoons: negative infinity
And that’s why people should always come to Chi Alpha in person rather than just watching our meetings online — you never know what’s going to happen when the camera’s not running.
Or you can tape before/after and sell it like Oprah does.
Dude, you really had me going there for a while!