Masked marauders left us a present

What’s gray, fat and wears a mask?
No it is not a bank robber, but raccoons certainly fit the bill of a robber.
Over the weekend we made our last family camping pilgrimage of the year to Itasca State Park.
Being experienced campers we know that all food has to be put away, especially at this time of the year when the animals are getting ready to hibernate for the winter.
Well Friday night we cleaned everything up, or so we thought, and went to bed.
About 3 a.m. I awoke to a “pop” noise under me, just outside the camper. I thought to myself... were we being robbed or was it just raccoons? I figured there was no food for them to eat so if it was raccoons I figured they would discover that and leave.
Well I decided to see if a person was in our stuff.
The popping noise was the lid off my rubbermaid tub that I stow my coleman stove in. There was nothing in there but a few can coolies and a stove top toaster. So I shooed him away and went back to bed.
About 20 minutes later there was another noise. “Clang, bang, bang, clang!”
My dad has metal plates for camping and the clean ones were on the table just outside the camper door. I knew that was what the sound was from.
I opened the door and clicked on my flashlight. There were two big fat masked marauders sitting on the picnic table. They were moving everything and making a lot of noise.
I yelled at them to “get” but all they did was sit up and stare back with that look of “What do you want? You give us some food or we aren’t going anywhere!”
I had to go out of the camper and chase them away.
The only thing we had forgotten to do was wipe the table off. There were a few corn niblets left on there.
The next night we did a better job but the bandits returned only this time finding nothing they decided to express their disgust. They returned the niblets in a pile of raccoon crap on the table.
–Until then,
Ken