by Cynthia Welte

Rosie, a raccoon, walked nonchalantly by us as we ate lunch in the backyard early in the pandemic. She waddled under the weeping larch, up one side of the chain-link fence, and right down the other, headfirst down the six-foot metal grid. Her hands and feet easily gripped the links. We saw her teats, swollen and sagging from caring for her brood. If this were a wood fence, I wouldn’t have seen her underside, not known to call her “Mama.”