Nights of the Raccoons by Isaac

Hunting Island, SC

Night 1
We had just finished dinner. We were going to go on a "walk" to the dumpster to throw away our garbage. When we got to the dumpster, we heard some scrabbling in it. Then suddenly, five cats followed by four raccoons exploded out of it. We stood there, watching them. When we were sure there no more animals in the dumpster, we threw our garbage in. We kept watching them, however. At one point, a raccoon jumped into the garbage and dragged our garbage bag out and started eating the chicken bones in it. Another raccoon stood up slightly, reached out with both paws, and grabbed at something we could not see. Then, having not caught it, it stood up a little further and reached up into the air, grabbed the thing, and ate it. We hoped the raccoon was not delusional. Then, a guy with two dogs came to put his garbage in the dumpster, scaring the cats and raccoons away. We started walking back to the camper when the guy called over at us and said,"There's something in this tree right here. It looks like an owl. Probably a screech owl or something." We shined our headlight up into the tree and lo and behold, two eyes were staring out of the palm tree. We walked under the palm tree to see if we could see it better. It wasn't an owl at all but a raccoon, staring at us from up in the palm tree.
We started walking towards our camper, with Dad shining the light into the woods. Then we saw to glowing green eyes, too widely spaced for a raccoon. We got closer, wondering if it was a wolverine. It turned out to be a deer bedding down. We returned to our camp and scared away a cat. We brushed teeth, played a round of Spades, and went to bed without further incidents.

Night 2
We had been itching to see the raccoons again, so that night we went to the dumpster armed with two flashlights and a headlamp instead of just one headlamp. We arrived at the dumpster to find that all the dumpsters were closed (There were four.)! We put our garbage in the last one; then I thought; 'Maybe there's a raccoon stuck in one of the dumpsters!' I was going to open the third dumpster, since that was the one the raccoons had exploded out of. Before I opened it, however, Mom said, "You'll be awfully surprised if one jumps out at you." There was wisdom in her words, so I asked Dad to do it. He opened it, and there sat a raccoon, looking a bit confused. Then, it realized it could get out and took advantage of the opportunity. We opened the other dumpsters, but there weren't any in them. We saw a few under the dumpsters, however, and one in a tree, but there wasn't an explosion of animals like we had hoped.