We have been camping for several years and were victims of raccoon thievery several times the first two years having unwillingly fed them a loaf of bread, a can of nuts, some plastic bottles of Coke and several bags of freshly pitted cherries.

I thought we had finally gotten smarter than the raccoons and were keeping our food out of their little paws but they proved us wrong during our camping trip to Governor Dodge State Park last week.

We had a whole chicken with us that we planned on brining and cooking over the fire last Tuesday when my husband’s parents came to visit us at the campground but it never made it to the fire.

My brother in law was keeping the chicken in his cooler until we cooked it but forgot he moved it to his beer cooler Monday night (yes, beer gets it own cooler) and forgot to secure it in his usual way of piling chairs and other heavy objects on top of it.

By the time my husband went over Tuesday morning to retrieve the chicken so we could start brining it, all that was left as evidence was the bag it had been in and several raccoon paw prints on the cooler (At least they had enough manners to close the cooler back up after taking out the chicken).

This is where I need to tell my husband I’m sorry (Sorry honey!). I impatiently sent him to look for the chicken in the cooler twice even though he informed me the first time he was pretty sure he hadn’t missed an 8 pound chicken. But I was cranky because it was 6:30 am and I was still tired because he had just spent several minutes rummaging around in our food bins looking for the salt and sugar for the brine but couldn’t find the sugar even though it was clearly visible inside the first food bin I happened to open when I had to get it out (I was trying to sleep but my husband wasn’t practicing his quiet stealth mode) My patience wasn’t exactly at an all time high so I kind of yelled at him the first time he back to our campsite without the stupid chicken.

After we realized it was a raccoon problem and not my husband’s vision problem I had to apologize and then go to plan B which was a trip to the store where the whole chicken we were going to have magically turned into 8 chicken breasts (I wanted it to turn into 8 pork chops but I was outvoted).

That same morning I wanted a blueberry bagel for breakfast. I was positive I had put them in the cooler the morning before and I knew the cooler hadn’t been opened during the night because the dutch oven I had set on top of it was still in place.

After 5 minutes of my searching my husband started looking in the woods. Sure enough, he came trotting out with the empty bagel bag. The raccoons must have been doing surveillance on our campsite, dashing out to steal my bagels during the few minutes I left the cooler closed (but not battened down with a dutch oven) while I went to the bathroom.

After having fed them (quite well), we were really careful about making sure every bit of food was completely out of their reach the next night because we figured they would certainly come back to see if they could find more more “those stupid people left out for us to take.”

They did visit the next two nights, making a lot of noise but thankfully not getting anymore of my food.

So, this is where I advise my fellow campers to never lessen up on their vigilance to keep their food secured and this is where I vow to practice what I preach!

Raccoons aren’t called bandits for nothing.

And to finish my story, after I didn’t get a blueberry bagel for breakfast everyone in our camping group decided I should take a nap and wake up a teensy bit less cranky. So that’s what I did.