Raccoons are the worst. You expect them to go through your stuff and steal your food while you’re camping, but they don’t stop there – half the time, they’ll be curious enough to come over and touch you. They prod your sleeping body with their horrible little people hands, run their claws through your hair, hold your fingers with their own. I’ve never been aggressively menaced by one, but they’ve slapped my ass through hammock fabric on multiple occasions and stroked my face or hands on others. I’ve played tug-of-war with large raccoons through my window when they grabbed the string to the yarn-and-cup telephone I’d set up with my neighbor.
I AM SO GLAD THAT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO HATES THEIR PEOPLE HANDS.
My first year at camp, our tent was infiltrated by at least six raccoons. They made scratching, shuffling noises as they crawled in from all sides. Somehow they were strong enough to shove our trunks across the ground, and started undoing zippers with horror-film slowness. How they didn’t wake anyone else up, I will never know. The shuffling noises suddenly stopped. They chittered to each other, and the sound was much closer than I had expected. Then I felt hands. Tiny fucking human hands touching my arms, not quite digging in with claws, and I whimpered and tried not to scream. This went on all night long.
I fucking hate raccoons.
They come into the cabins at camp every night. I’ve never had one touch any of my campers, but that’s only because I sleep with my hand curled around the handle of a broomstick and have trained myself to recognize their snuffling and scrabbling. I have leapt out of a bunk to sweep them forcefully out of the cabin in the dead of night, to sleepy tween boys whispering “Wow… you’re like a superhero…”
What if I want little hair goblins to sneak in at night and gently touch my face with their weird tiny fingers
then boy do I have the place for you
Published
Mooncustafer 