the mother's day racoon

We spent Mother's Day with all of my in-laws and had a lovely meal and a great visit. There were three mother's in the house, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and myself so there were LOTS of choruses of 'Happy Mother's Day'.

The big excitement for the afternoon was shortly after my father-in-law took the kids down to the dock to go fishing. My niece decided to crawl into the boat because she was a little cold. She came scrambling out very quickly. When she got under the boat cover she saw something furry and thought it was a cat until it turned around and proved itself to be a racoon! The other kids looked into the boat and saw this huge racoon as well. Then it disappeared into the anchor compartment where it had apparently gnawed through the boat to make itself a nest.

The police were called. A very nice officer came out, looked into the boat and then called the Animal Control Warden. He managed to get the racoon out of the boat and then let it go (apparently he is not allowed to relocate them so he has to let them go) so it went streak/waddling across the lawns as fast as it could. From the safety of the deck at the other end of the lawn it looked HUGE. I'm not the world's best judge of size but I'm thinking Racky here must have weighed about 35 pounds! I know racoons are fluffy and all and if they get wet they shrink down a big (sort of like a wet cat) but still and all this was a very big racoon.

The biggest gratitude of the day was that neither of the dogs knew the racoon was anywhere around, otherwise I think we would have had a problem. Now, of course, my father-in-law has a problem...he's got a hole in his boat. But at least it's a racoon-free boat.