RACCOON TOOTHPICKS WINDOWS

I had seen raccoons before, staring shiny-eyed into the beam of my flashlight and skulking down storm drains, but never up close, in daylight. The raccoon in the large Havahart trap beside our picnic table hisses and grips the wire mesh. It will not occur to me until I am an adult to wonder if Paul convinced all the kids he could train wild raccoons to compete in swim meets, or if he just made up a kinder explanation for me. I am missing summer swim team practice this week while we stay at the lighthouse. My raccoons swim with excellent form and breath control, pointing their toes as they kick, and remembering to breathe on alternate sides. They front crawl through the choppy green waves on Lake Michigan. But my swimming raccoons wear goggles and have special swim caps fitted over their ringed tails to decrease drag.

Paul doesn’t really say what the raccoons look like when they swim. But we want to find the best for our Olympic team, so whenever we catch one, we have tryouts.” “No? Well, some raccoons are very good swimmers. “You ever heard of the Raccoon Olympics?” Paul asks me. “So, we decided to train ourselves a swim team for the Raccoon Olympics.” His face reminds me of Abraham Lincoln-asymmetrical, homely, wise. His eyebrows look like albino wooly bear caterpillars. Paul has only four teeth and a white beard that wobbles when he talks. “Well, we used to release the ones we caught over on Washington Island, but the residents complained.” He looks at me carefully. Paul sits down at the other end of the table. “What do you do with the raccoons after you catch them?” Dad asks. “When there gets to be too many raccoons, they start to make nuisances of themselves over in the campground.” “No predators on the island,” Paul explains. Paul stops dragging the trap toward his ATV. He smiles with his eyes and leans forward, resting his elbows on the picnic table. Why do you trap raccoons?” My dad also likes talking to Paul. That night, I stayed up, peeking out from behind the curtains and saw a green light bobbing over the water, exactly where Paul said it would be. Paul pointed out a buoy near the tip of the island and told me the keeper’s ghost still walks that beach every night with a green lantern, searching for his lost children. A long time ago, the lighthouse keeper’s four children got caught in squall in their rowboat and drowned. Martin’s lighthouse just across the channel. The day before, Paul told me a ghost story about the St.

RACCOON TOOTHPICKS WINDOWS

He tells us where to turn off the official trails to see secret places regular visitors don’t get to go, like the coyote dens, and the natural rock windows in the cliffs, and the ruins of the old fishing village. My family is spending the week as volunteer docents in the island’s restored lighthouse.

He has spent every summer in the park for decades and knows everything about Rock Island-he’s a walking encyclopedia of its history, geography, plants, and wildlife. He pulls the trap out from under the leaves to reveal one big raccoon. I’m sitting at the picnic table, telling my dad about all the garter and fox and ring-neck worm snakes I caught, when the park naturalist, Paul King, stops by to inspect the live traps under the lilac bushes beside the table. My hands still reek of snake musk from spending the morning looking for snakes in the woods around the lighthouse. I’m eleven years old, wearing a hand-me-down tie-dye t-shirt way too big for me, and soccer shorts-my legs riddled with welts from black fly bites.

Raccoon toothpicks