Today's entry is partially brought to you by my eight-year-old boy:

On Saturdays I like to walk in the woods. I follow a path that I know. I also cut plants for my chickens. They tramp on the plants that I bring them.

Not only is this more entertaining than my own posts, it's also more grammatically correct.

I don't have writer's block. I have something much more insidious and insurmountable: writer's lack of talent and time. I know this has never stopped John Grisham from his assault upon American letters. But he never had to hold a full-time job while raising four kids and trying to trap a raccoon.

That's right: I'm trying to trap the medium-sized wild animal that has been pestering our chickenfolk and duckfolk for the past few nights. Like a drunken fraternity brother, he wakes us up at midnight stumbling around the premises, jonesing for that perfect late-night snack that will take the edge off pounding too much of the racoon equivalent of Milwaukee's Best (please leave your suggestions in the comments as to what the racoon equivalent of Milwaukee's Best might be).

We've borrowed a "humanitarian" trap from a friend to aid in this endeavor. What makes it "humanitarian," you ask? As soon as the trap springs shut, Jimmy Carter and Madeline Albright will helicopter in to explain in simple trans-species terms that I don't understand the root causes of why the raccoon wants to eat my birds. They'll make signs and puppets to demonstrate that the racoon was driven to this behavior by the fact that I didn't feed it enough, care for it enough — love it enough! Bruce Springsteen will write a song titled "41 Traps" that is punctuated by repeated stacatto bursts of the snare door closing: Crash! Crash! Crash! And if history is any indication, the poor creature will most likely receive an invitation from Kofi Annan to join the United Nations as an observer in the sessions and the work of the General Assembly as the Trans-International & Maine Benevolent Ensnared Raccoon (T.I.M.B.E.R.). Which all means I won't only be woken by the noise from the trap catching the blasted thing, but also a telephone call a few hours later from a really pissed-off Colin Powell wondering why the hell I helped create one more consulate he needs to shmooze.

If the ASPCA allows it, I will post photos of the criminal once he is apprehended. If the picture features a captive that looks more like a stuffed teddy bear, well, ah, that's just a mirage due to the salty sea air that wafts over our property.