The back porch AGAIN

Back home from the Farm after one night of an "interesting" weekend.  Right around 5 AM this morning, I kept hearing a noise outside right by the Master bedroom window, sort of a repeated flappity-flap, flappity-flap.  The wind was blowing at gale force but this was something else.  Sis wasn't barking but I thought I'd 1) get up and let her out so Fred could sleep in and 2) find out what in the world was making all that racket.  I should have stayed in bed.  I'm probably going to need a cardiac work up after what happened.  I stepped out onto the porch and I flipped on the porch lights, half blinding myself, so I flipped on the yard lights, and that's when Sis went into attack mode.  While she starts barking her shocked, scared bark, out flies a raccoon who immediately jumps up and clings to the screens, on the screened in porch.  And did I mention it's pitch black dark, except for the lights in the yard, and both of us are half asleep??  We're talking horror movie here.

                                          
Knowing raccoons can tear up a dog, I shooed Sis out in the yard and ran yelling like like an Apache, for Bruce to grab his gun.  I never call him "Bruce"-- but I bet I yelled his name fifty times in under three minutes.  You'd have thought my hair was on fire.  By the time the gun was loaded, the raccoon was back in the woods and I was a complete maniac.  I could barely speak. It all happened so damn fast.  Let me just say,  I DO NOT like to have the pee waddily do scared out of me.  Ever.  I hate being scared like that.  I was so jazzed and full of adrenaline afterwards that it took me an hour to go back to sleep. 

It seems the culprit was a giant sack of catfish food (it goes in the feeder on the dock) that was left out on the back porch.  It was all the come hither that raccoon needed, and I do not think this was his first trip to the back porch diner.  How that raccoon got out, I do not know--probably the same way he got in--but from now on, if I hear something, I'm NOT going out there.  Nuh, uh. 

Remember, now....this time last year it was me, Sis, and the snake on the back porch.  Something is just wrong with this picture.