Week 9 Story: Mr. Tanuki's Heist

"I don't know, honey, this seems dangerous..."

"Oh hush, darling, trust me we'll be fine. Have I ever let you down before?" 

Mr. Tanuki grabbed his flashlight and peeked around the corner. It was almost midnight and time for another one of his heists. The mission was simple: sneak into the jewelry store under cover of darkness and take whatever they could fit in the bag. The jewelry store had just moved into the city from the next town over and had made the mistake of bringing over some of their inventory before the security system was fully installed. Mr. Tanuki, of course, would take advantage of this.

The store was fairly protected from the outside. Standard camera setup, barred windows, motion detectors, the whole nine yards. The inside, however, did not have these same cameras and motion detectors yet, so it was only a matter of finding a way inside. A classic break-in would be futile and certainly leave evidence. However, the ventilation system provided a discrete entry point and had no camera attention. Crawling through the vents would be a surefire way inside while leaving the least evidence. Unfortunately, Mr. Tanuki's love for rabbit stew made him a bit too wide to fit through the vent system's tunnels. That's where Mrs. Tanuki came in.

Mr. Tanuki unscrewed the bolts covering the vent and handed Mrs. Tanuki a walkie-talkie and a heavy-duty canvas bag. He wrapped a rope around her waist and around his as well.

"Darling, all you need to do is follow the tunnel into the storage room and grab what you can. 15 minutes tops. Tug on the rope when you're done and I'll pull you back up into the vent and you can make your way back. Go for diamonds if you can. I believe in you."

"Okay, honey, you're right. I can do this. Just please stay on the walkie-talkie"

"Of course, darling."

Mrs. Tanuki timidly entered the tunnel on her hands and knees. It was a bit stuffy, but the metal was cold to the touch. She nervously crawled until she found the storage room. Unscrewing the opening, Mrs. Tanuki slid her legs through the opening and fell to the floor, landing gently on her feet.

"Okay, honey, I'm in."

"Excellent work, darling, now just call me once you've loaded up the bag."

In the room, she found various pieces of jewelry all ready for display behind glass enclosures. Looking around the room, she found a hammer sitting on top of a cabinet. She tried and tried to break the glass, but just wasn't strong enough. However, she thought about her husband waiting outside and didn't want to disappoint him, so with renewed determination she mustered all of her strength and drove the hammer into the enclosure once more. 

The display case exploded, shattering into a million glass shards. Mrs. Tanuki's hands were gashed up to her wrists, but she painfully began to grab jewelry. Suddenly, an alarm blared from the ceiling's speakers. She pulled on the rope and the other end came fluttering down through the vent.

"Honey, honey! The alarm is going off! What do I do!"

"Honey, please answer me!"

"Honey?"

There was nobody on the other line. Mr. Tanuki had heard the alarms and made his swift exit from the scene, leaving his wife all alone with police on their way. He set up an alibi beforehand in case anything like this happened, so no harm no foul for Mr. Tanuki.

Two tanukis, or Japanese raccoon dogs. Source: WikiMedia

Author's Note: 

I based this story on How the Wicked Tanuki Was Punished. In that story, a tanuki shapeshifts into a human and sells his fox wife at the market. The plan is for her to play dead and return home after she is sold. However, to take more of the profit for himself, the tanuki tells the buyer that the fox isn't actually dead, so the buyer hits her on the head and kills her. I tried to capture that same sense of betrayal in my story while changing up the plot.

As a small side note, the tanuki is my favorite animal! One time I went to the zoo and convinced my friends that my dog was part tanuki, which is definitely impossible. The tanuki in the story was really the reason that I chose it, as I had no idea that they were thought of as evil animals in Japanese folklore.

Bibliography: 

The Crimson Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1903).