Wild Kingdom

I have not posted in a little longer than I intended to, but things have been very hectic. We are heavily involved in recruiting for next year, have just finished our first week of Fall practice and I have been busy at home trying to capture one of the most elusive creatures of the animal kingdom, the raccoon.

It seems that the friendly creature has decided that it enjoys spending time at the Brooks household. Our furry little friend comes into our house every night about 1 a.m. and makes itself at home while enjoying our pet's food. Last Friday, during a huge rainstorm, he decided that things would be drier inside and, unbeknownst to me, came on in and set up camp inside our utility closet in our bathroom. As I was getting ready to go to bed and had just finished brushing my teeth, I turned to exit the bathroom and turned toward the utility closet and looked eye to eye with the raccoon. I was a little startled. He didn't seem fazed in the least. I tried to trap him in so I could finally catch him. I blocked all the exits and thought I had him. I came back a few minutes later to finally catch him and he had moved all the stuff I had stacked to keep him inside and escaped back to the outside. I finally got a trap to catch him on Monday. I set up the trap Monday night. Tuesday morning I woke up and checked the trap and saw something in it. When I got a little closer I noticed it was a possum.

This continued on for the rest of the week and each day I was successful in catching something. Unfortunately, no raccoon. Thus far I have caught three possums and a skunk. Hope this week leads to a raccoon, but am pretty doubtful because everyone tells me how intelligent the raccoon is, and I believe them.

We have had our share of animal adventures at Foster Field as well. Our first year of play we arrived at practice and arrived to see a sheep grazing near the pitcher's mound. Clay Calfee went over to it picked it up over his shoulders and carried it to the bullpen where it watched practice until our people from the ASU Ranch came and got him. Last year we had another possum scare as we were unrolling the tarp when a crazed possum tried to attack one of our players and sent the team scurring as we came under attack from the savage beast. We eventually escorted him out of the stadium through an open gate.

Then finally just as we were preparing to leave for regionals last season we arrived at practice and noticed we had a spectator sitting in the seats behind our dugout. Upon closer examination we noticed it was an owl. I'm disapointed to say he defeated me in a staring contest. We called animal control and they came and got him and took him to an owl sanctuary we have near here. The owl was a baby and its talons were huge. I hate to see how big a full grown one is. We have a family of owls that live in our light poles by the scoreboard and evidently it had flown down but was too tired to make the return flight.

As for our first week of practice there was some good and bad. We have a long way to go to achieve our goals but hopefully we'll continue to work hard and get better as week two begins. We have our Alumni Game on Saturday, September 26th at noon. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of our former players and it should be a lot of fun.