The Rascally Raccoon

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In my last discussion I wrote about a snake that visited us during the night when my son and I were camping. We had another visitor as well, a raccoon. Although raccoons are very common in Florida, and seem to be in high numbers around campsites throughout the state, we often do wilderness/remote camping, and in all the years my son and I have done this type of camping, we've never run into any raccoons, until now. Interestingly enough, this raccoon didn't show up until the second night of our camping trip, and it was an interesting little fellow. When it woke me up in the middle of the night, it wasn't because it was getting into our food supplies, it was because it was drinking coffee out of my mug I had left sitting out! I chased it out of the camp and up a tree, and then I went back and cleaned up so as not to leave anything out that would attract it, or other creatures, back into our campsite. Yet 30 minutes later, it was back! But this time, I got up and caught it trying to carry off my canister of coffee grounds! So, apparently, this particular raccoon enjoyed coffee! The next morning, I walked into the woods to the spot where I had chased the raccoon up the tree. I wanted to see if it was still around (I couldn't find him in the trees), but I did find its stash of food/drink items. In a pile on the ground was a wine bottle and chocolate candy wrappers (we didn't bring either). I laughed, because it appeared we had a raccoon with a hangover trying to sober up with some coffee! LOL Fortunately, the rest of the trip we didn't have any issues with visiting raccoons. I guess he sobered up and moved on to somewhere else in the forest. Have you ever had a run-in with a raccoon before? They are very smart little creatures, and can figure out and solve challenging ways to get access to people's food and/or garbage. They don't call them Trash Pandas for nothing!