And They Even Look Like Thieves!!

So have you ever been walking down the street in a town you don’t know only to be pulled into a gymnasium by a mob of circus clowns and forced to work in the dunk tank for 26 minutes and afterwards they offered you homemade 7-Up and hot dogs with no buns?

Me neither . . . just thought I’d ask.

(Don’t think too hard about that first paragraph and it’s relation to the rest of the post…I sure didn’t)

However, last week I was camping with the family near the beach in Oregon.  The first night I was trying quite hard to sleep, but from the tent next to ours someone, who may or may not be my father, was emitting snores so loud that the pine needles and stunned squirrels were falling off the trees and the nearby ocean tide refused to come in out of pure fear of the unknown sonic anomaly.  I read nearly an entire book that night (shockingly it was one without cartoon pictures and even had chapters).  As I finally closed the book to give sleep another shot the silent woods next to my tent erupted into a sound that literally sounded like two mountain lions had stumbled across the last piece of meat on the planet and were duking it out Michael Vick style.  In that instant I realized that a few moments earlier I’d heard my mom emerge from the “rhythmic-noise-tent.”

She was out there…

So I nearly bounced the Mrs HTF off of the air mattress while getting up and put on some clothes.  I found my mom standing near our food shining a flashlight around a bit wildly.  She said, “I saw them...”  We (by which I mean the food containers we’d forgotten to hermetically seal) had been infiltrated by ravenous raccoons, and these were the kind that didn’t like to play nice and share apparently.  Two of ‘em had put on a nasty-throw-down underneath our picnic table over a couple raw eggs and the Momma HTF had seen it all go down.  Do not doubt the bravery of my mom!  The next nights we learned our lesson and put the food inside a vehicle . . .

My only fear was that the raccoons would come into camp with crow bars and 9-mm handguns.  A couple nights later I did actually see them lurking at the edge of the woods holding up handmade signs urging us to go to sleep and to leave the ketchup out.  But we were able to avoid another attack.  However, I suspect the folks camping a few sites down probably got cleaned out by the “Thieving Varmints”  (amazing name for a rock band) instead.