DISCLAIMER: Some readers may find descriptive imagery in the following piece to be disturbing. Read on at your own risk.
Back when our responsibilities consisted of cleaning our rooms and eating all our vegetables, my brother and I would spend the summers swimming in the Lucerne – a small canal – or ditch, as we called it – that cut a path near our home in rural Lingle. We would often park our bikes at one bridge and walk a mile or two to another, so after our long float downstream we had a quick way to get home and devour a frozen pizza, Ramen noodles or whatever other food we could find.
It wasn’t handy to wear shoes in the ditch, as they would often stick in the thick mud and slip off, so our feet were callused and scarred from walking barefoot on the hot asphalt and occasionally cutting ourselves on a piece of broken glass in the water.
Neither of us could swim very well, but the ditch was only a few feet deep in most spots, and our doggy-paddling did the job just fine.
We saw fish, snakes and spiders galore – and every once in awhile, something else.
One day, my brother and I were arguing, which was pretty common back then. We were swimming and I said something that upset Jake, and he dunked me.

Although my brother is younger than me, he’s always been faster, and I started to chase him downstream. No matter how forcefully I pushed the dirty brown water behind me, Jake’s lead continued to grow. Eventually, he was far enough ahead he turned around to taunt me.
It went on like this for a while – my slow pursuit, Jake alternating between running and teasing me … until Jake neared a “waterfall”. This is what we called points in the ditch where farmers stacked boards in slots between two cement posts. The water was deeper above the waterfalls, and it was often washed out and relatively deep immediately below, as well, with strong currents pulling the water and whatever was floating in the ditch toward the boards.
As I trudged onwards, I saw something startling glide by. At first glance, it looked like a pig with claws. It wasn’t alive, and it was pink and hairless with a rotund belly and sharp talons hanging from its humanlike hands. I didn’t get a good look at its head – but my mind immediately went to all the times neighbors had mentioned how many chemicals might be in the ditch due to fertilizer, pesticides, etc. and that we should avoid drinking the water.
Surely, this creature was some sort of chemically altered mutant.
I watched, horrified, as it continued on down the ditch at a much faster pace than my own.
Jake was in the process of crossing the waterfall and didn’t notice the creepy pig slip over the boards next to him. As soon as he reached the other side, he held onto the boards and faced me – taunting me again.
I didn’t care this time, though, because it wasn’t long before the current caused the creature to crash into Jake’s legs, again and again. He looked down and was clearly disgusted and terrified by his new friend, which continued to cozy up to him.
I had to laugh. Eventually Jake freed himself from the current and we called a temporary truce as we exited the ditch and ran alongside to try to catch up with our odd find as it cruised eastward.
I’ll spare you the details, but we determined that, instead of a pig with claws, the creature was a bloated, hairless raccoon.
It didn’t keep us from swimming in the ditch or do anything to diminish our post-swim appetites. But it made for a memorable summer memory – the day the ditch served its own brand of icky pink justice.