September 13, 2023: Masked-Bandits Broke into our Camper!!

Howdy Y’all

I know I still need to post about our time in Port Townsend, but I’m actually going to jump-forward-in-time quickly and do a post about the masked-bandits who raided our camper storage last night, or rather, early this morning.

We all settled into bed early last night, since we were getting up early this morning to explore tide pools at Salt Creek Recreation Area. For some reason, I couldn’t sleep for the longest time, but eventually dozed off into a light-slumber...only to be awakened at around 1:30am by Rosie barking in her bed right near my head. Thinking I heard voices (which I’m now guessing are the voices that exist only in my head, until I write their stories, LOL), I assumed there were campers heading down to the beach to see the water at high-tide, so told Rosie to be quiet, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep…except that she kept barking.

Finally, Maleah woke up and decided to put Rosie’s muzzle on, which we try to avoid. But the littles need their sleep, otherwise they’ll be cranky. And if they’re cranky, it’s quite possible others will end up being so, as well, if you know what I mean. Since I was already partially-awake, I figured I might as well make a bathroom trip and get a drink before settling back in. As I reached the hallway, Dominic brushed past me with the statement “the coons got into the dog food.” My groggy brain didn’t register his statement until I was standing at the sink washing my hands, at which point I hurried to the door where Dominic was looking out with his flashlight. Sure enough, there were three large racoons enjoying a tasty snack of chicken and bacon doggy dental sticks.

This guy apparently thought he was going to roast his stolen goodie!

They had opened the latch to the RV outside storage cubby where all the dog supplies are kept, grabbed the bag of dental sticks, and ripped it open. When we put it away yesterday, the bag was about half-full…by the time we got out there, there were three sticks left! Those rascally-critters’ teeth have probably never been cleaner :)

The handle they had to twist open

Why open the bag from the top when you can just rip it?

Even more exciting was that in a tree behind them were three (four, according to Dominic) tiny, masked faces peering down at all the fun. The baby coons were adorable to see and made me think of Loony Coon by Sam Campbell, one of my favorite nature books growing up.

It's hard to tell, but the little blobs in the tree are actually baby raccoons :)

At this point, Dominic and I were standing on the outside rug watching them, while they just kept enjoying their stolen treats. I called into the camper for Randall to grab my phone so I could get a picture. In what some may call a coincidence, but I call a God-thing, I had actually made the deliberate decision before bed to not shut my phone off and instead put it on airplane mode…I ALWAYS shut my phone off at night. Mom likes that because then we aren’t EMFing our brains, and Dad says it extends the battery life. But, for whatever reason, I decided not to last night and man am I glad I didn’t, since my phone takes forever to turn on and I likely wouldn’t have been able to take pictures. That being said, my phone takes terrible photos at night (and every other time of day, LOL), so the quality isn’t great.

When I tried to step a little closer to the masked bandits, they finally decided they’d had enough of our intrusions and ran off into the bushes where they sat and watched us do a little clean up. We threw the last few sticks to the edge of the woods for them since we didn’t want to risk our dogs catching some sort of disease, and then went back to bed. Needless to say, the remaining sticks were gone by morning. I don’t know about the others, but I personally slept soundly after that. Did all that happen by chance? I think not!

Fun Side Note: Dominic and I were outside with the coons. Randall was awake watching through the door and holding onto Nellie so she didn’t go outside. Maleah was laying in our bunk keeping Rosie quiet, under the impression that there was a cougar outside. Levi woke up, saw the coons and woke Sammy to see them. The main area inside and around the RV was full of activity, doors opening and closing, dogs barking, and coons growling… The back bedroom remained completely quiet, its occupants soundly sleeping through it all. Mom and Dad had no idea that we’d been robbed by masked bandits until this morning when everyone was getting ready for tide-pooling. Dad asked if Rosie was barking last night…what do you think the answer was?

Until next time, God bless!