Diva Suffers a Crisis in Dogly Confidence, or Why I'm Tired Today

I've written before about the ball of canine assholitude that is Diva Dog. Consistent with her other annoying habits, Diva will occasionally awake from a dead sleep at, say, 2:30 a.m., and run at an imaginary something, barking the entire time. I know this because Diva sleeps under my bed. So I can hear her.

Ordinarily, this sort of thing can be cured by flinging a pillow at her and asking her to kindly shut the hell up. Then she wakes up and realizes she is charging not the cat or squirrel of her dreams, but rather our other dog, who is so used to this drill that she now sleeps through it entirely. Whereupon Diva slinks back under the bed, plops down and immediately falls back to sleep.

Except last night. Shortly after midnight, there abruptly arose such a din of houndly screeching that we both sat upright in bed (just like they do on TV when someone wakes up from a bad dream, sweating and breathing hard, even though most people never really do that).

The pillow was duly hurled, and the order to cease and desist issued, but to no avail. From the fog of sleep, we vaguely discerned that she was attacking the sliding glass door that goes out onto our deck from our second-story bedroom. And she was attacking it good. She was beating the crap out of that door.

Once we got up and flipped on the outside light, the source of her angst was revealed -- two fat raccoons peering inquisitively into our bedroom. (Perverts.) Our guests sat there the entire time, completely unfazed by Diva's howling, other than sporting the most grievously offended expressions on their faces, as if to say, "Jeez, who pissed in her bathwater?"

It took both of us to physically pry Diva off the door. I held her while my sleep-addled husband cracked the door and asked the raccoons to please get the fuck off our deck. His voice through the cracked door succeeded where Diva's hissy fit failed, and the visitors scampered hastily down the stairs.

Still, Diva barked and writhed and, when she realized I wasn't going to release her, emitted a kind of grieved, high-pitched whine. She wanted those raccoons so badly. She'd encountered an opponent she was unable to intimidate, and this was intolerable. That the raccoons had maintained an almost Zen-like calm in the face of her assault seems to have unsettled her deeply.

I think she's still a little depressed about it today: