I hate you.Every Sunday, starting in early August, I like to take a moment before my sister’s family and I sit down for our weekly dinner to inspect the Italian plum tree out back of their house. It’s a greedy kind of inspection, because for the past two years, the tree (on a vacant lot covered in brambles and spider webs) has been supplying us with six months’ worth of jam, plus a couple bottles of plum liqueur and ratafia. The late spring had made the fruit sparse this year, but I figured we could still get 20-30 pounds off the tree. Until they started disappearing. Then they weren’t there at all.”Raccoons,” said my brother-in-law. “A whole family of them. We’ve been hearing them in the trees the past month.” Chalk one up to nature, I thought. At least I have other sources. Maggie D. has promised me some from her tree. And my friend Anne said that she had a friend in Newcastle who had an overabundant tree. We scheduled a trip to harvest it on Sunday.Until I got a call on Saturday evening. “Raccoons and deers,” Anne said, sadly. “They’ve stripped the tree this week. My friend doesn’t think there are any left.”Maggie, you are now my only hope. I expect you to be guarding your backyard with a pellet gun and a sneer. As for you, fellow opportunistic omnivores, someday I will exact my revenge. Is this just a run of bad luck on my part, or are raccoons invading Seattle?