Pan the Raccoon

On his way to work one day, my father came across a very young raccoon wondering around the busy road. It was scampering back and forth across the road, in a frantic frenzy. It seemed that it's mother was just hit by a car, and it did not know what to do. Being the kind hearted individual that he was, and somewhat absent minded, my father pulled the car over, picked up the raccoon, placed it in a box that he had in his car, and proceeded to drive back home.
You see, I come from a family who would help any animal that needed it. Though my dad did not admit to it, and always complained about the cats that my mother had, this instance proved that he had a soft spot for our furry friends.
Once home, my mother cared and nurtured this raccoon, until it grew and grew. "Pan" was the raccoon's name, I am not sure why, I was very little at the time. Being very little, I still remember coming home from shopping and finding out kitchen as if someone had ransacked it. Cupboards open, cereal boxes shredded, bread half eaten, and everything else that Pan could get into, ripped apart. Soon after this, there was some discussion of releasing Pan back into the wild, in the woods behind our house.
Not ready to release him, Pan stayed in our house for a little while longer, until the infamous day of the makeover on my father.
My father was a very hard worker, who left very early in the morning, put in a long day running the machine shop that he worked at, and came home around 5:30 each night. There was a ritual to his home coming. Well, not really a ritual, it was too short to be called that. He would walk in the door, walk to the living room, lay on the couch, and sleep until dinner.
One day, after an extremely long day at work, my father came home, and fell into a very deep sleep, sitting up on our living room sofa. He lay, legs stretched out, and head resting on the back of the sofa. We tried to wake him a couple of times to ask some questions, but it was as if someone had just switched him off. There was no getting a response out of him.
Now, Pan often laid on the back of the couch, so it was not surprising to see him jump up and start to get comfortable beside my father's resting head. As you know, raccoons and monkeys do very similar grooming activities. They search through each other's fur, looking for tiny bugs, and whatnot. Well, Pan, getting all comfy with my father, decided to search through my father's hair before he went to sleep. My sisters and I were sitting in the family room watching one of the three channels that we got on our television, when we noticed what Pan was doing. Being in such a deep sleep, my father was oblivious to Pan searching through his hair.
It wasn't until my father started jerking his entire body, did we realize that Pan was actually doing something to him. Trying to hold back our giggles, we watched as Pan pulled out little clumps of my father's hair! With each pull, my father would not wake, just jerk his entire body.
It was just too hard to hold back the laughter anymore. After five minutes of jerking, and pulling, our laughter got the best of us. With the laughter roaring out of our mouths, my father woke on Pan's last pull.
Jumping to his feet as if his shoes were on fire, my father picked up Pan, and carried him to our back porch. As my father turned to walk out the door, we finally got to see the back of his head. He looked as if he had just joined a colony of monks. There was a bald spot, the size of a half dollar, on top of his head!
Now our laughter was uncontrollable! Unable to speak, or even breathe, we laughed for what seemed like forever! Now, my father, who loved to play jokes on others, did not like to be at the other end of the laughter. "Don't look at me!" he shouted as he ran through the family room, to find a hat.
All through dinner, we ate looking at our plates. Each snicker that started to creep out was quickly extinguished by a swift kick in the shin by another family member. My father wore a hat for the next couple of months, and not long after that, Pan was released back into the wild.
That was the last time my father ever brought home another animal that he found along the road.