\u00a0 It was a gentle early Summer day in the forest.\u00a0 Scrappy Raccoon was playing along the side of the road with his brothers and sisters.\u00a0 Scrappy was called Scrappy because he was known to get into little fights with others at the least provocation.\u00a0 Scrappy’s mother had scolded him so many times about his temper and how badly it made her feel to know he would fight with anyone.\u00a0\u00a0 What would happen this Summer\u00a0day would make Scrappy’s mother think differently about her fighting youngster.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Mrs. Craig, who lived across the road, decided that afternoon to take her dog, Belle, for a walk.\u00a0 They walked across the road and since there were no cars on this road on the weekend, Mrs. Craig removed the leash from Belle and allowed her to run free.\u00a0 Belle loved running and sniffing in the woods, but this day she smelled a different smell than any she had ever smelled before.\u00a0 She snorted and snuffed and suddenly she came upon a strange creature.\u00a0 Something she had never seen before.\u00a0 It was Scrappy and he had not seen the big brown dog coming along in the weeds.\u00a0 The\u00a0dog was upon him before he could make a run for it.\u00a0 Belle began barking and Scrappy fluffed up his fur to make himself look bigger and began to hiss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Around and around Scrappy Belle\u00a0circled, barking and snapping at him all the time.\u00a0 Scrappy hissed and lunged at the big brown dog, baring his sharp little teeth,\u00a0but it kept barking at him and trying to bite him.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Mrs. Craig was screaming and yelling at Belle to stop.\u00a0 She grabbed Belle’s collar and Belle jerked and pulled until she got herself free of the collar and went back to attacking the little raccoon.\u00a0 Mrs.\u00a0Craig grabbed Belle’s tail and\u00a0pulled and still Belle kept barking and snapping at\u00a0Scrappy.\u00a0 This went on for fifteen minutes.\u00a0 Suddenly, it became very quiet and Mrs. Craig thought that either the raccoon or Belle was dead.\u00a0 She had heard that raccoons can kill a dog and that is what she feared had happened.\u00a0 Then the hissing and barking and snapping began again and she knew the dog and raccoon had just paused to catch their breath.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Unable to get Belle away from the little raccoon and afraid\u00a0Belle would kill it, Mrs. Craig knew\u00a0she needed help.\u00a0 She walked back to her house and called Mr. Craig and said, “Get the truck and come\u00a0quickly.”\u00a0 Mr. and Mrs. Craig rode in the truck to the place where Scrappy and Belle were in the fight of their lives.\u00a0 Mr. Craig walked right into the middle of the hissing raccoon and the barking dog and grabbed the scruff of Belle’s neck and pulled her out of the brush.\u00a0 Mrs. Craig opened the\u00a0truck door and Belle willingly jumped in and they all headed back to the house.\u00a0 Belle was covered in mud and the truck and Mrs. Craig were also by the time they got home.\u00a0 Belle, looking a little chastened, went and got a long drink of water and collapsed on the deck panting heavily.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Back in the forest Scrappy dragged himself home.\u00a0 He was mangled a little, wet from dog saliva and completely worn out from the ordeal he had gone through.\u00a0 His mother saw him walk in the door and said, “What happened to you?”\u00a0 “I fought a dog and the dog lost,” bragged Scrappy.\u00a0“Hmmm,” Scrappy’s mother was not sure she was hearing the whole story, but she was happy her little raccoon was home safe.\u00a0 Belle told her sister, Bonnie, how she fought a raccoon and lived to tell about it.\u00a0 Scrappy, on the other hand, stayed away from the road from that day forward.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 This is a true story except for the parts I made up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 It was a gentle early Summer day in the forest.\u00a0 Scrappy Raccoon was playing along the side of the road with his brothers and sisters.\u00a0 Scrappy was called Scrappy because he was known to get into little fights with others at the least provocation.\u00a0 Scrappy’s mother had scolded him so many times about his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-stories-by-kate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}