We Went Camping...And Were Attacked By Raccoons

When we went camping, we knew we would be dealing with Raccoons. We do every single year we go there. I mean, if you are a raccoon, THIS is the place to live. No one can hunt you, people feed you, it's a great life.

We try numerous times to take pictures of the raccoons to no avail. We try to outsmart them, it never works. Last year they opened my sister's cooler and stole her meat. The year before they drug my soft sided zippered cooler under the camper, unzipped it and ate our crackers. I threw the cooler away after that. I have been sitting at the camper table in the evening and had a raccoon stand on a cooler and look in the window at me. It was too fat to crawl thru the window so I wasn't too worried.

This year, my mom and I were disorganized when we got to the campground and we never really recuperated from that state of mind. We KNEW we were supposed to take care of all the food, we just kept forgetting to. So it's really our own fault that the raccoons liked our campsite best.

We fed them chocolate and cake and cheese and dog food...they loved us. Not to mention we had two kids under two dropping them all sorts of goodies on the ground.

But what I had NOT anticipated, however, was S1 and S2's "brilliant" plan. The one they did not run by me first. Perhaps because I would have told them absolutely not.....

One night they lined the entire outside of the tent with dog food and giggled scared as they heard the raccoons rubbing along side the tent as it ate all the pieces up.

On the last night, they took sticks and raked up the ground, setting a cup filled with Coca-Cola, marshmallows and a hot dog in it. Yes, they got lots of tracks to look at in the morning, left behind in the raked up dirt.

I should have been prepared for such actions, they asked if they could pack the live trap when we were loading the camper. (I told them "no")

The funniest thing is that we hate these little critters around our house. I love my chickens too much to like raccoons. However, at the campground they are cute and funny. But not to my sister, who despises them with all her being.

And yet it was my sister's tent they always searched around first. It was my camper they crawled out from under one night, sure, but it was in plain sight of my sister. She seen them crossing just in front of her when she would be headed down the road to our campsite. But the best, the very best, was the night she was sitting alone at the campfire while we were getting our coffee's and so forth, and the raccoon came up right behind the chair she was sitting on. Her scream sent it scurrying up a tree.

Our camping trip would not be the same without these little thieves.

Here is video of one of them getting into our food one night. I was sitting in my bed, late at night, engrossed in a novel I was finishing, when I heard them. Sorry for the blinding light as I tried to find them it in the camera, but it gives you an idea of how well these little guys eat.