The Kitchen Table

The day had been long and very busy. Vivian was exhausted but knew that she needed to prepare dinner. After changing into some casual clothes, Vivian walked into the kitchen to begin the drudgery of getting supper. Slowly she walked over to the pantry to remove the pasta and spaghetti sauce. Tonight would have to be a quick and easy meal. She was scanning the pantry and counters for the salt but remembered she had left the salt and pepper on the kitchen table.

Vivian walked over to the kitchen table and suddenly every muscle in her body froze. Her mind could not function, but she tried to understand just what and how that got onto the kitchen table. Somehow Vivian managed to walk over to the table to get a better look at the shocking thing which lay coldly on her kitchen table. "The table we eat on, "Vivian muttered.

Quietly she reached over to make sure that the raccoon was truly dead even though the amount of blood on the creature seemed to shout death. "The poor thing", she softly uttered. Beside the dead raccoon was a medium size box with a towel over the top. Some splotches of blood were on the box as well as the towel. Vivian was unsure as to whether she wanted to actually view the contents of the bloody box.
It had yet occurred to her to question why all of this was on her kitchen table. Once this thought entered her brain she begin to quickly think what had happened here, who did it and why. First she must continue her investigation to discover the contents of the box. Slowly Vivian pulled back the towel to reveal the contents of the old worn brown box on her kitchen table. Inside, quite to her surprise was their family cat quietly nursing her newborn kittens and shockingly alongside her own new born kittens were three very new and content baby raccoons.

Jade was purring so softly with her eyes closed. Every now and then she would lean down and clean one of the babies, even the raccoons, just as if they were one of her own. Amazingly the cloth so neatly laid out under the cat and her new babies was very clean and neat. Vivian snapped out of her trance of wonderment to now question who helped these animals and who put them on the kitchen table.

From down the hall Vivian heard a noise. She turned and went down the hall to the bathroom. Inside was her youngest son carefully cleaning a newborn raccoon that did not seem to be breathing well. Nick, a boy of 9 with sandy blond hair and bright blue eyes, had tears streaming down his face but a look of love as he carefully cleaned the infant coon. Vivian entered the bathroom and looked at Nick.

"Oh mom!" wailed Nick. I tried to save them all. I tried, but the mama coon had been hit by the car and I knew I had to help her. I had no idea that she was having babies like Jade. She had the first three and I put them in the box with Jade so she could take care of them. But....sobs began to pour out of Nick. Vivian quickly took the baby raccoon and tried to see if she could see why it was having labored breathing. Part of the amniotic sac was still covering part of its nose and coming out of its mouth. She carefully pulled off the sac and waited to see if the breathing would become more at ease. Within a few minutes the baby raccoon started to breathe more easily and seemed to be more comfortable. Nick stopped crying and watched as his mom took the rag and went to put the baby in with Jade so she could feed the tiny orphan.

Nick continued to explain that the last baby had been trapped halfway out of the birth canal when the mama coon passed away. He did not know what to do so he pulled the baby out. He had not known to remove the remaining remnants of the birth sac. Vivian buried the coon in their yard. Jade was content with all of her new babies and dinner for Vivian's family would be on TV trays tonight. She realized that her bad day at work meant nothing compared to what her son had handled today on the kitchen table.