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some water to wash away the peanut butter. "What is the point," she reminded herself assertively, for Tilde was an assertive opossum. "The point is that this place where I live is a veritable Garden of Eden, and the nibbles a part of the fig tree-fruit for her day. It was in fact a favorite part of her day because at night she could venture out and make a stop along her travels, which she liked to do, and between looks at the moon have some nibbles. So Tilde decided to put up a sign, one the raccoons could read. You can see a copy of the sign

Tilde put up on dirt path by the drive to the front steps of the house, near the underneath way of the porch:

God is near. Rejoice in the evening and dance in the moonlight, wait for the sun, and begin a good life, enjoy. Or something about peanut butter warning. Or something about keep off the nibbles, and cryptic lettering of ancient kinds, and kindnesses).

You probably can't read it. Tilde knew what it said, and certainly the raccoons knew what it said. When Tilde was writing for them she kept thinking that maybe it would be better to make a similar, more direct sign-something with a straightforward message like,

"Keep Off the Grass."But, no that wouldn't work, because the raccoons never keep off grass anywhere if they want to walk on grass. In fact, in Tilde's first summer she'd heard the mice that lived in the house say that the raccoons were perfectly happy to not only get on grass, but to dig up grass. Of course there wasn't any grass for digging up around the house, except down by the creek. Nonetheless, this was getting off the subject and if there was anything Tilde was good at it was getting off the subject. She decided on the sign that you see when you go by the house near the drive.

We're getting to the end of our story, so to make a long story short, Tilde didn't succeed in keeping the raccoons from thenibbles. But she did succeed in making a very nice sign, which the raccoons commented on and spent some time looking at.

In fact, the sign was the talk of the raccoon community, which she heard when they started their usual pushing and shoving each other around. The sign stood all summer long. And Tilde often had nibbles on her moonlight walks, by the way.

After all, the raccoons left some. And no, she never did get around to putting out the peanut butter so fortunately that part of her plan was just a passing thought.

Learn more about this author, Peter Menkin.
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