Rabid Racoon

Last Saturday I went out for a run on my usual 4-5 mile route. I was running down the road that leads into a round-about - or “cul de sac” as some might call it - when I saw a dark blob by the side of the road near the curb. Often there are cats on or beside that road so I figured that it was just one of them. But as I got a bit closer the blob moved away from me, off the road and into a yard. The cats never run away from me so I was thinking maybe it was something else. I could not make out many details of the animal aside from its general size and a bushy tail even though I might have been less than 30 feet from it. I know cats can have bushy tails but this one perhaps looked too bushy for a cat. I thought that maybe it was a raccoon. When I ran past it I thought it might have hissed at me and then I feared that it was a rabid raccoon. I had my radio headphones on so very well might not have heard a hiss, but nevertheless my imagination started running along with me.

As I ran out to the round-about I worried that the rabid raccoon would attack me on the way back; I had no other choice but to double back on the same road. As I ran around the circle at the end of the road I thought about how much it would hurt to get bitten by a raccoon. As I exited the circle, I was on the lookout for any abnormal blobs on or beside the road. I ran in the middle of the road to be safe. When I got back to where I had seen the animal, it was gone, or at least nowhere in my limited range of sight. With relief I continued my run but for the rest of that night my mind was bothered off and on by how I just did not know what I saw, despite the fact that it was relatively close and any other normally or somewhat-normally sighted person would have easily been able to tell whether the animal was a cat, raccoon, or whatever.

It has happened before, where my mind is triggered into a frenzy of imagination because of an ambiguous visual stimulus. These experiences are frustrating because they are accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness. I could have empowered myself by approaching the creature to get a closer look, but if it WAS a raccoon I might really have gotten attacked (I was already quite close to it!)! So, I stayed safe and just wondered and ran with the mystery.