He's back!

IMAGINE our surprise when the royal magesty of Raccoonery
paid a 2nd visit at our portal this very morning. Once again to have the pleasure of the masked regal presence, the blind and aged coon. He came tapping at our door without need of his usual guide and guardian, carrying the white and red walking stick of a sight-impaired creature as his sole navigational aid.

KING KOON said he could almost skip from the sewer grate, now that his corner digs had been flushed and vacuumed by the city crew yesterday. He was ostensibly just checking the spring clean-up, and then decided to cross over the street and visit, and see if perchance we had any more raccoon (Ritz) crackers and root beer, his true want.

He asked about our daughter, Erin. Wasn't it about time for her to be graduated from Lawrence? Yes, it is, come June 15th, we slowly answered, in puzzlement. The King said he used to tail Erin back and forth from Hadfield Elementary and then to and from South High School after that. He's been missing her these past four years, he said. (We knew none of this.)

'There was a humane girl, Erin, very close to our sewer raccoon hearts!"

After we told him what she is going into as a graduate student at UW Madison (library science), he nearly choked on his root beer. "Why, bless my soul! Yet verily, I am not surprised! I am in possession of several old books myself in my library chambers under the old downtown post office. I am an archivist of antique volumes!" Then he told us of his purloined stamp collection from when the *Rotundra* was really a working post office, before the socialite place, and before the later bank incarnation.

"I always was amused by Erin's reading of books while she walked to and from school, so distracted was she that I could creep right up to her and practically read over her shoulder.

King Koon stayed and chatted about an hour and then slowly arose and carefully strode to the door, tapping with his cane, remembering almost right where it was. He said, "Please, don't get up."

"PARDON ME FOR ASKING," I said before he could find and turn the doorknob, "but just how old are you anyway?

He threw his cloak over his tail before I could count the rings.

"I am as old as you want me to be. I cannot come and dine with you on raccoon crackers and root beer if you must know my true age, but I do understand your human curiosity.

"Let's just say that I was here before your country dropped the nuclear bombs on
Japan. It was then that we raccoons became 'sewer raccoons,' living underground, fearing reprisals against the above-ground blood-lusting inhabitants. They eventually came. We must stay in the sewers at least until the current administration is got rid of.

"But I remember that day when you took Erin to Bethesda Park (he was there?) for the remembrance service on the anniversay of the bombing of Hiroshima. I still have the 1995 newspaper picture of her dabbing ceremonial tears from a bowl upon her cheeks."

"Yes," I mused. "She recently presented a paper at Lawrence on the factor of 'countenance' in Victorian times. I wondered if she remembered the picture you mention."

King Koon called over his velveted shoulder as picked his way over the threshhold,

"Please give her my regards! We all love her!"