Snarling Animal In The Woods

As evening draws near I head off down to the beach to catch one last sunset since this will be my last evening before I head home the next day. 

After another  beautiful display of colours I figure I had better go and make myself some supper before it becomes too dark to see what I am making. What's on the menu  for tonight? A pot of mashed potatoes with grated cheese on top. Nothing else, just that. I had brought with me a box of those instant mashed potatoes and I can eat a whole pot of those to myself almost any day. 

I make my way through the little cedar lined short cut and was just about onto the road when all of a sudden to my left I hear and nasty sounding snarl coming from the trees. I stopped short and tried to peer into the bush to see if I could see what it was, to no avail. I had no idea what it was but my mind was running the gauntlet of what it could be. Perhaps a badger or coyote? Maybe an extremely rare visit by a cougar or Lynx? It didn't really sound like a cat though. I suppose it's not out of the question that it could be a wolverine or a weasel of some sort. Do we even have wolverines around here ? Do weasels snarl? It sounded fairly large, but you can't really judge size by sound. Again, I have grown up in the country and I have seen  bears and wolves and foxes up close so I am not normally afraid of them. However it's different when you can't see it and it's snarling at you. So I am thinking to myself, that once again, here I am alone and I have absolutely no means of defense. There wasn't even a near by stick on the ground that was worth grabbing for. I am not panicking yet but these sorts of thought were not helping the matter. So I went to the best defense there is, I said a prayer to God and asked Him to protect me. Then I made my way quickly out of the short cut and over to my site. I turned to see if anything was following me. All was quiet again and nothing came charging out of the bush. My heart slowed down as I stood waiting for a few minutes to see if anything more would happen. 

Eventually I felt that the coast was clear and I could set about making myself some supper. Besides, making a fire should keep the animals at bay because they won't come near the fire pit, right? Not to mention that at the very least I have a couple of Pokey Sticks at hand now that I can use in a pinch to help ward of any potential snarly animal. In case you do not know what I mean by the term "Pokey Stick", it is what our family has long ago named the stick that you use to poke at the logs in the fire to stir it up when it gets low so that you don't burn your hands. We usually have one set aside that stays for the duration of the trip and doesn't get thrown into the fire pit until the very last day. Sometimes we never throw it in at all and we leave it for the next camper so that they can have a Pokey Stick. On this trip, for what ever reason, I happened to have two. I guess I brought along the one from Bass lake when I packed everything up in a hurry.  Comforted by this thought I set about laying all the food out on the picnic table and went to work making supper. A couple hours later I was sitting comfortably in my chair and enjoying a nice hot meal and a nice hot cup of tea. 

I ate about half of the pot of potatoes and was pretty full. I was looking up at the stars and just relaxing when all of a sudden I heard the same snarling noise coming from the same area just across the road from my site. I froze. Now it's dark out and that meant seeing this unknown snarly animal is all that much more difficult. I figure that since I am sitting by the fire I am OK, but I will want to go to bed eventually and then all that will be between me and it is a thin wall of nylon tent material. The snarls become louder and nastier sounding. 

I jump up out of my chair and grab a Pokey stick and make my way to the car in case I need to jump into it in a hurry. Better to have some metal between me and a ferocious  beast than just some thin material. Once again, I say a little prayer. Then the nervousness in me was replaced with a different emotion....anger. Wait a minute! I am NOT sleeping in my car tonight! I am here to camp and I will NOT be chased away by a snarly animal. What's louder and probably more scary to the animal than ...a car motor! 

So I jump into my car and turn it on. I turn on the head lights and proceeded to reve the motor. Then I drive like a wild thing into the one of the two campsites across the road. I move back and forth and shine my headlights into the bush and look for the animal at the other end of the snarl. Nothing in that site. So I move on to the next site. I am sure the other campers in the RV down the road are wondering what the heck I am doing.  I have visions of being reprimanded by the Park Rangers for tearing up the ground in those campsites, but heck it was it or me. Once again I flash my headlights into the bush and see..... nothing. I think I have scared it away. I stop the car and get out and listen. No more snarling. I think we're good. 

I am just about to get back into my car to go and park it when I hear it again. The same nasty snarling sound I have become familiar with today. This time though, it wasn't coming from across the road. It was coming from.....MY CAMPSITE!   That's right, my plan had back fired. I got the snarly thing to move all right. Only it moved closer, not farther away. 

Well, the car thing worked once, so may as well give it a try again. Do I have to do this all night? Or will it finally give up and go bother someone else? I hop in my car again and go tearing through my site and pull right up beside my camp fire. And there in the headlights of my car I finally got a glimpse of the source of the snarly noise. There was not one, not two but three of them! And they were not in the least bit afraid of me or my vehicle. As a matter of fact they were headed right for me! 

I got out of my vehicle and started to laugh. I laughed at my self and I laughed at the situation. I was laughing because what was heading right for me were three.....raccoons! The snarling was because it was a mother and two babies. The babies were driving momma batty and every once in awhile she was snarling at them to put them in their place.

These little guys were bold as brass tacks. The car wasn't even turned off yet when they decided to head towards me to see if I had anything for them. They walked within centimeters of the fire pit. I was actually afraid they were going to get burnt. (There goes my theory of animals fearing fire....see all the stupid lies you learn from TV shows).  The next morning I could even see the ashy paw prints left behind on the side of the fire pit,  so it wouldn't surprise me if they had even actually gotten into the fire pit at some point during the night. 


Now, my grandfather used to be a conservation officer and my father was a biologist for the Ministry of Natural Resources before he retired and we have taken care of many a baby raccoon in the past. So I know that it is not a great idea to feed these critters because it teaches them to become pesks and rely on humans for food and it means that they won't learn to fend for themselves in the wild. However, I also know they were after what remained of my supper and I still had food spread out all across the picnic table. With three of them and one of me and they were already within a foot of me, there was no way I was going to be able to get all the food put away on time. So I gave up the war before it even began. I put the pot of left over potatoes on the ground for them and they started to fight over it. This could get nasty I thought and I am going to be stuck right in the middle of it. So I went and grabbed a bag of stale hot dog buns and a couple of peaches and just  sat in my chair and fed them until they were full. The fighting and snarling stopped and they  enjoyed their meal, especially the peaches which I cut up into bite size pieces for them.  I had a container of water already sitting by the fireplace that I put there in order to douse the fire with. They used this as their own personal sink to wash their food with and later on they got right into it and used it as a bath tub. 

Finally they were stuffed and they headed out to the bush and I began to clean up and get ready to go to bed. When all of a sudden I hear some rustling  in the bush and I see another furry raccoon face peeking out at me. Oh, I guess they aren't done after all. Once more the little bandits come sauntering over to the fire pit. There's one, there's momma, there's number three and......umm wait. There's four and now there's five! Did momma leave some behind before? Nope. On closer look these babies are a little bit smaller. This is a whole new family! No wonder I had seen so many empty shells and cray fish legs down along the water's edge earlier today. This little point is housing an awful lot of raccoons for one little area.  And so the feeding began again. I pulled out some more bread and some more peaches. These guys were definitely a different gang  because where the other ones were very interested in the peaches, these guys were more interested in the bread.  Eventually I was out of stuff to feed them and I made my way to bed and left them to their own devices. I could hear them for awhile from my tent as they occasionally snarled at each other while fighting over the last morsels. In the morning they were gone and the only sign they had even been there was the paw prints on the fire place, a few dirty peach pits and a muddy water container. 

So here it was, the last day of my solo trip camping. I had to be packed up by 2 p.m. as per the rules of the park so that meant there were only a few hours left to do anything I wanted to do. Probably not enough time to finish the other half of that hike (at least not at the speed I was hiking), but there should still be enough time to take another walk down to the beach and maybe around the campground.  So I headed down to the beach to take one last look at the lake and see the seagulls and the Canada Geese swimming in the water. 

Then I made one more round of walking the campground roads to say good bye to the place. As I walked I came across a campsite with an RV parked in it. There tended to be more RV's than tents here which isn't too surprising for the time of year. Now I don't really consider RV's to be camping really. Granted there are occasions where I can see the need for them such as for the elderly or infirmed, so I can see their place. What I didn't understand was at this particular campsite the RV had a satelite dish set up. Really?!? A satelite dish? Now that folks, is truly not camping. Why not just stay home if you need to watch TV that badly?  I shook my head and laughed and snapped the picture to laugh at later. (So now I am sharing the chuckle with you). 

After saying my good byes to the place I broke up camp and headed home. This camping trip was definitely an adventure and has left me with some great memories and stories. I will have to come back to this park one day to finish that hike and to enjoy the beauty and great environment that this park provided. I definitely recommend camping here if you are ever in the area.