Raccoon on Fire

So, I am at my parent's house and I feel like I'm living there. I am younger as are all my siblings, though we are not really young--just teenagers. There is a somewhat festive or gathering feeling, though there is no obvious signs of celebration. We are all hanging about together, drinking coffee and some of my siblings friends are over.

A raccoon waddles into the living room where we are all standing about. Kevin explains that this is his pet. This revelation prompts us all to get shouty about why the hell would you keep a raccoon as a pet, how can they really be domesticated, etc.. Kevin seems to be enjoying the growing animosity against his new pet, and by proxy, him.

My mother leaves the room to go outside for a smoke and I think my dad is with her, on the porch. Which is weird, because in real life my dad refuses to be around my mom while she smokes. OK, so, a few minutes later the raccoon disappears from the living room. None of us are really paying much attention anymore. And we only realize that it was ever gone, when it comes back with a cigarette stuck to its fur and still smouldering--its back is all smoky.

I was pretty freaked out, but ran into the kitchen to grab a pitcher of water to splash on the raccoon. My brothers were in shock and were not being very helpful about all this. And as I rushed back into the living room with the water, right before I splashed the raccoon, my eyes played a trick on me. I saw the floorboards alight from beneath the carpet, as if the racoon's fur actually had set the room aflame. As soon as the water hit the raccoon, the room went back to normal.

Of course, my immediate thought is that my mother has done an unspeakably, horribly abusive thing. But she comes into the room exclaiming that the raccoon had been routing around in a pair of her pants in her bedroom, must've found a stubbed out cigarette and got it stuck to its fur. For some reason this explanation satisfied all of us, though it doesn't explain why the raccoon was actually on fire.