Well now. Is this going to be a “Rusty gets rabies” story? Rusty doesn’t seem too knowledgeable about Nature’s wild creatures. I’m thinking that the Old School Rusty might have been wiser. It’s a tradeoff of character priorities, perhaps. But feeding human food to wild animals is rarely a good idea, either for the human or the animal. As many (or all) of you know, this can create a dependency that is bad for the animal.

The question now is “OK, what’s next?” Does Rusty get up and move on to his next forest encounter? Or does he hang out with the raccoon and continue his one-way conversation? This isn’t Winnie the Pooh, so the animal is not going to start talking back. Perhaps, as some readers suggest, some of Rusty’s friends or rivals may show up and something will happen.

Otherwise, the storyline is wide open for some kind of plot development. I’m just hoping it doesn’t involve a really stupid decision, like Rusty letting the wild animal jump into his backpack so he can sneak him home as a secret pet. Rusty can’t be that naïve, can he?