Wild Thing

My friend Michelle lives in the middle of nowhere... also known as just outside of Sudbury. She keeps trying to convince me to go there and visit. But they have snow so that's a big no. And this evening, a fox climbed up on their windowsill. That's a definite no. First it's a fox then the next thing you know I'll get a paniced text from her saying that moose has her trapped in the garage or something. Or a bear ate one of her kids. No thank you.

But her fox encounter got me thinking about some of the odd animal encounters that my family has had over the years. Most of them involve raccoons. And my dad.

For years we went camping at Sharbot Lake. It's a beautiful campground. There's also a wonderful bakery just off the highway. One day we stopped in and my dad got a blueberry pie. That evening, my dad opted to leave it and a bag of buns out on the picnic table inside the dining tent. My mother warned him not to but he assured her that they'd be fine as the tent was zipped shut.

For those of you not familiar with raccoons, they're fucking sneaky, especially when food is involved.
Later that night, my mom woke me up and said "you've got to see this". My dad was outside the tent trailer, yelling at something. Our dog was hiding inside the doorway to the trailer and my dad was trying to coax him out to "get it". The dog was not moving. The "it" turned out to be a raccoon who was up the nearest tree, with the bag of buns and what was left of my dad's treasured pie. Dad approached the tree and tried yelling at the raccoon some more. The result? The raccoon threw a bun at him. I'm serious. One of the funniest things I ever seen. Dad gave up and went to bed.

The next morning, leaning up against the base of the tree, was a perfectly clean tin pie plate. Even raccoons know how to say "screw you". LOL.

Same campground, many years later, my family and I are alseep in our 2 room tent. A noise wakes me up. It's a damn raccoon. He came down the tree and landed on the tarp over our utility trailer. He then jumped onto the roof of our little 3 person dome tent, which is where we keep the food. I listened to the raccoon rattle the zipper for some time, not being able to open it. It eventually gave up and started to sniff around.

Thanks to a lantern at the next site over, I could see the shadow of the raccoon moving around. I decided to flick the side of the tent to see if I could scare it off. Just as I flicked the tent, the raccoon decided to sniff it and I ended up hitting the raccoon in the nose. The raccoon shrieked, I screamed and jumped out of my sleeping bag, and then proceeded to jump backwards, tripping and falling over my brother in the process, which really woke him up. As the raccoon ran away shrieking, all I could hear was my parents in the front of the tent killing themselves laughing. Stupid raccoon.

While the country is very nice and quite, I think I'll stick to the city. I like the idea of not waking up to a bear on my balcony or a deer in the neighbour's pool. That's what camping it for :)

Good Night!

Sarah

Picture my mom took of a skunk in their neighbour's yard.