Why we hate raccoons.

Distance cycled to date: 3160 km

Flat tires to date: 10 (Jeff - 5, Keenan - 5)

"Bicycles Prohibited on Freeway" signs that we've cycled past to date: 4

Number of times that somebody told us of highway closures because of wildfires in California: 0

We saw our first raccoon on our very first night in the United States.  It was in a State Park in Washington, and as the sun set, we saw two sets of glowing little eyes scampering across the path.  It was kind of exciting - neither of us had ever seen a raccoon before, and they looked like such cute little animals.  We watched them wander through the campground, and accidently scared one of them up into a tree, and we were entertained watching it - it was like a giant squirrel, climbing the tree, hiding from us.  

Later that night, after we went to bed, we heard some scratching outside - we opened our tent, and there were our cute, furry friends, climbing on a bicycle.  We shouted at them, and scared them off, and they didn't bother us again.  We still maintained our vision of a cute wild animal.  We liked raccoons.  

Fast forward to the present.  Having more and more encounters with "cute" raccoons, they have slowly driven any sort of compassion towards their species out of us.  The last few nights, camping with the raccoons have been some of our worst experiences yet.  We had been warned, north of San Francisco, that one campground was notorious for its vicious raccoons.  We still hadn't yet developed this strong of a hatred for them, but we took the warnings somewhat seriously, and like the rest of the campers sharing our site, we put our pannier with most of the food in a "raccoon-proof" wooden locker.  Not long after falling asleep, we awoke to hear a nasty scratching, scraping, hissing and growling.  I was frozen in the tent at first, almost certain it was a bear.  No small animal could be making that much noise.  However, as time passed and I lay there in silence, listening, I finally worked up the courage to open the tent and look outside - I turned on my headlamp, and peered out the tent vestibule.  It was like a scene from Jurassic Park, with the hoards of velociraptors circling a piece of prey.  An army of raccoons had descended upon our locker, and by this time, had already forced it open, and were ripping apart bags of food from one of the closed bags within it. 

I was furious.  The sight of those raccoons, eating our food, was too much.  I yelled, I tried to pick up something to throw at them, but they didn't care.  They glanced at me, their beady glowing eyes staring at me with pure evil, and then turned back to their free meal.  I grabbed the slingshot that we had kept close by, in case of an emergency like this, and frantically tried to pick up some rocks to fire at them.  By this time, Jeff woke up and looked out of the tent, and seeing me, standing in only my white underwear and biking shoes, with a slingshot in hand knew instantly that the raccoons had come out.  He jumped into action as well, and we tried to scare them off, but they would hardly move.  We found enough rocks, each of us frantically running around under the moonlight scraping up rocks from the ground to use as ammunition.  Eventually we found enough, and we fired and fired at those raccoons.  They knew no fear, nor pain, and it took what seemed like forever to fight them off, back into the woods.  

We locked everything up again, as tight as we could, and went back to bed, knowing that we had no choice but to let them come again, and just hope that our bags would withhold their assault.  We lay in our tent for hours, trying to sleep, but only hearing their hissing, growling, and scratching.  It was hard to bear, laying there doing nothing, knowing that they were getting into not only our food, but everybody else's as well.  But we couldn't sit outside shooting at them all night long.  They just persisted.  

In the morning, we surveyed the damage along with the other 3 campers at our site.  We got off the easiest, with our solid weather-proof Ortlieb's (although they still managed to get 4 packages of instant oatmeal, some pasta, and most remarkably - a container of cream cheese out of our closed dry-bag).  The others that packed their food in garbage bags were not nearly as lucky, with almost everything destroyed.  Garbage was strewn everywhere, and dirty little pawprints were found on nearly everything.

From that day on, we couldn't look at a raccoon the same way.  The last few nights have been bad, but we have learned our lesson.  Last night they managed to grab my backpack and drag it for about 30 metres before we were able to pick them off with the slingshot.  We're becoming better marksmen everyday, and never go to bed without a pile of rocks within reach.

At the moment, we're in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a 9 km ride from where we started this morning.  We thought it would be a beautiful day for our scenic ride past Big Sur on the central coast of California - but we got as far as this before seeing the giant sign flashing the message "Highway 1 Closed".  It seems that there's a wildfire where we had planned to camp tonight, and the highway is closed.  An alternate route would take us an extra 3 or 4 days of cycling, so for now, we're sitting tight, waiting for a chance to go.  It's a beautiful day outside though, so we might make a trip to the beach and relax, without any guilt about not getting enough km's today.  What can you do?  We just hope that the raccoons won't be out again tonight...