Weekend trips

Raccoons becoming AGGRESSIVE!

That was the last line on the state park bulletin, handwritten at the bottom of a typed list that was posted by a Washington State Park ranger. The other items on the list were your basic rules of conduct while at the park. Things like: Don’t feed the deer, No gathering of firewood, No littering…. The list went on, all neatly typed up and bullet pointed. Then at the bottom of the list that last ominous handwritten line……”Raccoons becoming aggressive…!”

It may have even trailed off in a scribble off the bottom of the page….maybe not… :) At any rate it just had the feel of the last desperate journal entry of a man at the loosing end of a long battle.

Me and Tawn read it at the same time and almost immediately laughed out loud. For both of us it bought up the image of a lonely park ranger, stuck on this little island state park, late at night, all alone, defending his little cabin against a growing mob of increasingly aggressive raccoons.

I could picture him fighting them off, but slowly losing ground and probably his sanity as they employed various raccoon combat techniques (ala “The Great Outdoors”) in order to out wit the ranger and drive him off the island. The ranger, being a well trained park ranger, would have retaliated with some sort of wacky “Home Alone” counter measures. Then as a last ditch effort to warn others as he tried to escape the island, he hastily scrolled those words on the sign; “Raccoons becoming aggressive!” The situation was so desperate that he could not even be bothered to construct a proper sentence.

If he got off the island or died in some ambushed by the raccoons, I have no idea. What I do know now is, we should have heeded his warning. It was even overcast and misting rain, all the signs were there. Instead we laughed it off and continued up the path to the fire pit where the rest of our friends had already gathered for a night of Rum, cooked animals and bullshit by the ton.

This little gathering was taking place on Blake Island, which is a small island about eight miles west of downtown Seattle. The entire island is a State Marine park, which makes it a great place to get away to for the weekend. Even if don’t have a lot of time to get away. You can only get there by boat and it has lots of campsites and a nice little marina or mooring balls if you don’t want to tie up a in a slip.

At some point during the festivities Tawn and I needed to head back to boat for supplies, most likely more rum.

Heading down the ramp to the docks, I caught a glimpse of a small raccoon scurrying about on the rocks right at the waterline. Could this be one of the aggressive raccoon the ranger had tried to warn us about? Surely not, look at it. It was no bigger than a fat house cat.

The next thing that happened should have definitely warned us to be on guard. At the bottom of the ramp just as we stepped on to the dock and turned right to head to our boat, we were looking directly into the cockpit of another person’s boat. It was one of those sport fishing boats with a small cabin and a large open area in the stern for fishing and gutting fish. In this open area was large blue and white Igloo beer cooler.

Sitting right on top of that cooler with not one ounce of fear was a raccoon. Much bigger that the little one on shore behind us. He was calmly trying to figure out the latch. FIGURE out the latch!! I don’t mean clawing and scratching at it like a stupid little rodent. But like a crafty little masked bandito with nothing but time on his hands. He would pull at it, and then push on it. As two humans, much higher on the food chain than he is, by the way, were standing there, not 6 feet away watching him.

I stamped my foot on the dock thinking that would scare him off….nope. I gave a small shout and pushed on the boat with my foot. He finally decided to take off, but not in the usual way animals take off when a human yells at them. It was more like when you’re sitting in your car at a crosswalk and some little shithead kid walks extra slow while talking on his cell phone, the whole time apathetically eyeballing you as they walk past. Annoying and a little funny when it’s a kid at a crosswalk, but spooky as hell when it’s a raccoon at night on a creaky dock.

When we arrived at our boat, Tawn went below first and says “What the hell?”

Just as I duck in behind her, she points to the table where the scattered remains of a loaf of bread we had left sitting out were trashed and spread all over the boat.

RACCOONS! Dammit!

We took the hint. The raccoons did not want us here, that much was clear. This was the warning shot. Next time, who knows what, might happen. We cleaned up the mess and grabbed more rum and headed back up to the party. But not before locking the boat up tight.

After the party was over and we were back on the boat getting ready for bed, we decided that we needed a little ventilation on the boat. So we propped open the forward hatch an inch or two and left the rear companionway hatch open about eight inches. This would be enough to let air flow through the boat. Tawn wanted to close it up completly, but I reasoned there was no way a raccoon would dare climb on to a boat with two humans onboard. Especially if one of those humans was flat on his back snoring like only a slighty..(ehem) overweight, passed out drunk man can.

“Don’t worry about it” I said and just as I faded off to sleep added “There is no way a raccoon will get on this boat”

…………

End of part I

Tune in later this week for the exciting conclusion.