Murder on the Back Steps!

  Early this morning, Ms. Nycto begged to be let out the back door.  The cat, otherwise known as the Bayou Princess, demanded in loud meows to have her whims met.  Not wanting to wake up the entire neighborhood at 5am, I heeded her calls and unlocked the door.  No sooner had she slipped out the screen door, than she begged to be let back inside.  Something was amiss out on the back porch and she was having no part of it!  I opened the screen door and let the finicky feline back inside.  The Princess then scampered up the stairs and retired to the large queen-sized bed that she has claimed as her own.  Well, now!!! I pondered if some coyote was prowling in the darkness.  I headed back into the kitchen to get a mug of hot coffee then settled in by the old wood burning stove.

  Along about daybreak, I ventured out that back door just to see if there was any evidence of what scared the cat.  Yup.  Plenty of evidence!  It appeared that a brutal murder had taken place on my doorstep overnight!  The entire steps was covered in blood-red goo!  Not to mention there were incriminating "hand prints" in the "blood"!  My goodness!  No wonder the poor Bayou Princess was scared out of her wits!  

  Now came the time for me to clean up this mess as it was mostly by my own oversight that it occurred.  The night before, I found a nice bowl of cherry sauce in the fridge,  This stuff had somehow gotten shoved far behind the half bottles of pickles, the extra cartons of cream cheese and the chilling pie dough for today's dessert.  The cherry sauce was beyond my use but instead of tossing it in the garbage, it was stuck on the back porch to be toted to the compost in this morning.  I was not about to traipse out in the cold to empty that dish!  Well, by the looks of it, a raccoon decided that the cherry sauce was far too tasty to be wasted. The raccoon helped itself to the dish.  By the looks of things, the cherry sauce may have been even a bit fermented and the coon may have gotten a bit tipsy.  The bowl, itself, was flung under the nearby pear tree and cherry sauce was smeared on every step!  Silly, drunk raccoon!  He murdered that stuff!