My Tuesday was the kind of day everyone needs, once in a while. In addition to helping my friend out in his business, I find myself also serving as his mentor. While he is as good as gold, he is a procrastinator. He will patch (if he becomes motivated) time and time again before he will make the real fix. I have been on my soap box for a couple of months talking about leasing trailers when we have several sitting at the fleet shop awaiting minor repairs. Therein lies the problem. Some of these trailers have been out of service since February of 2004. Lately I have been trying to lead by example. It is different to get out of the office.

I suppose to get all this in perspective I need to back all the way up to Monday.

Recently my friend had finished the cleanup at the gin and brought lots of the seasonal equipment home, some of it loaded with residual gin trash, seed dregs and the likes. Some of the trailers that were loaded heavier had begun to sink after the recent rains. We decided to go up and try to move these trailers and unload them before they went totally to the ground. We noticed some of the load tarps were really straining and on inspection we found a large amount of water trapped on top of them. I opened one of the trailer doors to look and as I shut the door I noticed a set of eyes glowing back from within. There was a raccoon clinging to the front corner of the trailer. We tied the doors open and moved the trailer back and forth to get the water off the tarp, then we put it in the equipment line and rolled the tarp over. Our "guest" didn't budge and on close inspection from the front catwalk we discovered we had four additional "guests". A momma and her babies! We left the door open for when she chose to vacate.

Tuesday we began the day finishing up a van trailer that had been almost ready for a couple of weeks. I finally took the trailer to the warehouse facility in town and returned to put another trailer to the door for needed repairs. The second trailer, also a freight van, needed two bolts in an overhead door assembly and one roller. I began working on the door, from the outside, then the inside. Door open, door closed. I had air tools inside, hammers, punches, pry bars. I had made enough noise to wake the dead. Occasionally I would hear some odd noise and figured there was a resident mouse between the interior and exterior wall of the trailer, but I paid it very little attention. Finally I completed the work and began taking tools out. I then decided to make a quick survey of the rest of the trailer and began walking towards the dark front when I noticed a familiar pair of eyes glowing (or should I say glowering) at me! Another raccoon, and not happy that I had disturbed it and was blocking the only exit. I glanced away and saw that my friend was driving up so I just sat down and told him to go on inside the trailer and check things out. He began rapidly walking towards the front of the trailer and I knew his eyes had not adjusted from the bright sunlight to the dark confines of the trailer so I hollered and told him to stop and look. It was about then that he saw that same pair of glowing eyes! Immediately he began his retreat. After a few minutes he climbed back in the trailer with a hundred feet of air hose with an open end, he was able to scare the raccoon enough for it to climb up to the top corner of the trailer and then he threw the hose to the front allowing it to uncoil while keeping hold of the other hose end. Then he exited and we plugged the air hose into an outlet. Immediately the open end of the hose began spewing and flailing around at the front of the trailer and in just a few moments the raccoon decided to run for it! Out of the trailer it came. Into the shop! It took it a few seconds to adjust to the lighting and then the raccoon began to try to find a way out. Lots of claw tracks on the cement! When things settled down I climbed back in the trailer and walked to the front and found ........... four babies. This was the same raccoon that had been in the other trailer! I think we are going to have to name her Houdini! How she gets in these closed trailers I will never figure out, I am just thankful that I was not an appealing (or threatening) morsel! I did get all the babies (without touching them and putting human scent on them) and we moved them to what we hope is a compromise location!

FATHER, give me a double dose! I need YOU bad!