Never let your wife or girlfriend watch Deadliest Catch. It's basically a bunch of the most manly men you've ever seen fighting mother nature, and toughened by the sea. I was watching an episode this past weekend and my girlfriend decided to join me. I could tell by the determined look in her eyes that she was intrigued. So intrigued, that she insisted we watch another episode. And I could tell she was coming to an understanding. A moment of clarity. While she watched these fisherman fight the horrors of the Bering Sea, peeling ice off their beards and avoiding the freezing 40 foot waves that were crashing on deck, she looked at me. With a collared shirt poking out of my sweater, and my pressed khakis hanging over Italian shoes, I was anything but an outdoors man. She knew her boyfriend wasn't out battling the elements to bring home the bacon, instead he stared at spreadsheets all day and came up with dick and fart jokes on his dumb webcast. I knew from that look that I needed to prove to her that, beneath the sweater from Barney's, and the village of Anthony products that lined my medicine cabinet, I was a man. A real man. A man that could kill bears with a toothpick and duct tape. (Or, at the very least, bait a hook.)

As it was Father's Day weekend, my girlfriend and I went up to Connecticut to see my folks and spend time in the "sticks". Getting out of the car, my dad took me aside and said he had something to tell me. Without fail, my mind raced through the three "d's". Death, divorce, decapitation... which of my various family members or parents' friends had suffered one of these fates?

"We have a problem." He said, putting an arm on my shoulder.
"Who died?" I asked, trying to fill in the blanks as if I could soften the blow.
"Oh no, it's nothing like that. We have a visitor."
Shit, my crazy uncle Herbert was staying with us!
"Seriously Dad? I'm not changing his colostomy bag again. That shit spilled on my foot last time."
"What? No. I think there's a squirrel in our attic."
"OK, so where do I fit into this?"
"Well, our cable is out and I think it's due to a downed wire in the attic. I was wondering if you wanted to go up there and fix it."
"It's a fucking squirrel! I can deal with a squirrel. No problem."
"OK, whenever you get around to it. Thanks."

I was halfway through the restless night when I heard a shuffling overhead. I was somewhere between being asleep and awake and wasn't sure what I was hearing, nor where it was coming from. I attempted to tune it out, but it only grew louder. And then the door to the attic started shaking as if sudden changes in pressure were causing it to bang against the door jam. Only the thuds were accompanied by scratching sounds on the back of the door. And I had only one clear thought in my head:

Zombies.

Through a ritual of Obeah or a downed space probe, the dead were walking among us and my parents were harboring them in their attic. I couldn't sleep, and decided I'd spend the rest of the night sleeping downstairs on my parents' couch. (Yes, I left the girlfriend alone in the room to fend off the creatures by herself. Remember, I'm an asshole, but I'm not stupid.)

"Are you ready to fix the cable?" My dad said, handing me a steel trap with peanut butter in it. I shrugged and took it. "One more thing, the light is broken in the attic so you'll need this flashlight."

With my parents and my girlfriend looking as if they were sending me off to war, I opened the door to the attic, half expecting to be attacked by a rabid mammal. With one last look back at my girlfriend, I knew I had to suck up my fear and venture on into the blackness. She looked concerned ... this was good. I needed her to think I was in great peril. Part of me hoped to be attacked by the creature in order to gain sympathy (read: blow job) later on.

It occurred to me that this moment in my life was straight out of Alien. I was in a dark and foreboding place, and there was something of unknown origin lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce at any moment. Through the cobwebs, containers of winter clothes, and balsa wood houses left over from my time as an architecture student, I could sense a stirring. I was being watched through the mountains of collected childhood debris. In the distance, at the far gable of the house, light shone in through the vent slats. Only, these slats weren't parallel as normal, but rather askew as if they'd been bent backward by a crowbar.

This wasn't a squirrel. This was something much larger.

I've wanted to say this my entire life, but never found a better chance then now. Peering my head out from the attic, I looked at my father and said, "You're going to need a bigger trap."
"What is it?" My mom asked.
"I'm not sure. But whatever it is, it's larger than a squirrel." I mumbled back, imitating a mid-70's Eastwood.
"Well go get it." My mom shot back.

This is not what one would expect from a normally caring and sympathetic mother. Instead of mentioning that, perhaps, it would be best that we call animal control. She wanted her son - her skinny son with the weak ankles - to head into the darkness and destroy whatever it was that haunted their attic. I snapped on the flashlight, swallowed hard, winked at my girlfriend, and tried not to vomit from fear.

Eyes are amazingly reflective. They're usually the last thing you see as your headlights catch them just before you run over an opossum on a country road at night. Heading deeper into the recesses of the attic, my light caught a glow. Two small discs of yellow looked back at me and blinked. Moving the flashlight to gather what (and how big) the creature was, I realized this wasn't a squirrel, but a raccoon.

Most normal people would walk away. Head out of the attic, call animal control, and move on with their day. I stood there motionless debating just how painful a rabies shot would be. They stick it into your stomach, don't they? I'd be a fucking hero if I attacked this thing. Hell, I'd have a good chance of making it into my parents' yearly recap in their Christmas Card if I killed and skinned it - parading out of the attic with it's pelt around my neck. It wasn't that big, right? Grab the head with your hands, muzzle the jaw, and deal with it scratching your arms. A few cuts, sure, but I'd be a goddamn hero. Suddenly, I noticed another set of eyes staring back at me. Then another. And another. The difference was, these eyes were smaller and clumped together with the remains of my childhood security blanket (now in shreds) used as nesting material. I couldn't kill a mother in front of its kids. Plus, mothers have a way of wanting to protect their children from attackers - well, some mothers anyway.

I walked out of the attic, not with the blood of an animal covering my hands and pouring out of my mouth. But with the trap in hand and a smile on my face.

"I have good news and bad news," my hand patting my father on the back. "The bad news is, you've got a raccoon up there. The good news is, you're grandparents."
"Great, but did you fix the cable?"

I asked that my parents get a bigger trap and/or call the animal control center, insisting that they not kill the raccoon or her children. (As of this writing, my parents have not retrieved the raccoon, but feel it, along with its litter, may have vacated the attic entirely.)

On the train ride back into New York, back where the sounds of the West Side Highway lull me to sleep each night, and where the biggest fear of an invasion is by cockroaches and mice, my girlfriend smiled and said she was proud of me. I may not have had the scratches of fighting off a wildebeest or needed a cycle of injections to prevent foaming at the mouth, but I did head into the darkness to confront the unknown and came back with nothing more than a little compassion.