I’ve spent a lot of my training energy with our dog on tricks that are pretty useless but make for good party tricks. One recent one is “secret”. I hold my hand up to my ear and have her put her snout in my hand, with her nose pretty much touching my ear.
It’s a pretty easy one to do, you just start by putting a treat in the hand and eventually you take the treat out of the hand and give it to her after the “secret is told”.
As such, I’ve become very accustomed to the sound of sniffing directly in my ear.
On Tuesday night, I found myself in Brockville, at St. Lawrence Park. A really lovely municipal park that offers camping and a great view of the St Lawrence river.
My campsite for the evening
The tent I have is very small, which means I have to leave a fair bit of stuff in the vestibule
Photo from a different night but you get the idea
A few hours into my sleep that night I heard an intense sniffing sound. I first thought I was dreaming of Mabou. But it was far too real, far too loud. I turned my head and spotted a raccoon within petting distance, just on the other side of the mesh of my tent. It took every fibre of my being to not pet the raccoon.
For reasons that probably relate to exhaustion, I left a closed ziploc bag of dried mangoes in the vestibule.
I tried shooing it away with my voice (and again, I want to underscore, despite desperately wanting to, I did not pet the raccoon) but it didn’t move away. Finally I turned on my flashlight on it and it reached its paw to grab the mangoes and scurried away.
Later in the night I would get up to find that the ziploc proved too much for the trash panda.
I went back to sleep, finding comfort in the rest of my food being tucked away elsewhere. A few hours later there were two raccoons intensely sniffing on either side of the vestibule.
There was nothing for them this time. But still I see my old friend popping its head in the vestibule. I shine the flash light on him and this little shit takes my sunglasses.
I scrambled to bring my Tilley hat into the tent, afraid now that the raccoon was going to try to complete the look.
I found the sunglasses in the morning, covered in slugs. I was able to shake them off but it was covered in some kind of residue and didn’t have time to clean it off.
The next morning I popped by a Circle K to grab some aviators. Was able to wash off my other sunglasses thoroughly in my hotel on Wednesday night.
When people are surprised to learn that I don’t like camping, might I remind them I’ve never had mangoes stolen from me at a hotel.
