Masked Prowler: The Story of a Raccoon

by Jean Craighead George

  On an afternoon late in August, Procyon and his bigger sister were wrestling in the bottom of the basswood den. The rest of the family were out on the limbs where they had sunned themselves during the day. His sister grew tired of the tumbling and rolling and meant to end the play. She bit Procyon sharply on the ear. He jumped on her, growled and returned her bite with a sound nip on the chest. She galloped up the tree. Procyon chased her out of the hole and down the outside. She stopped at the first limb. Procyon nipped her while hanging above her, then passed on down the tree and walked off to the gooseberry bushes.

  He ate until he was contentedly full and stretched out to play on the back of an old log. He found a walnut and took it in his paws. Rolling around on his back he tossed it between his feet. He was twisting and biting it when the old coon came by.

  Procyon dropped his walnut and rolled off the log. He crouched against it looking at the hunter. Suddenly the marshland birds became silent.

  The old coon was looking up, the young cub followed his gaze. Above them came the winged hunter, Circus, the marsh hawk. He hovered for a minute over the raccoons. His feet swung half extended as his sharp eyes surveyed the scene. Then gracefully he veered and flew toward an abandoned meadow. Undisturbed, the old coon looked away from the soaring hunter. He did not look at Procyon again, but turned away and bounded off along the edge of the reeds hoping to surprise a vole he scented in the meadow. As he left, Procyon reached out and rolled the walnut, his eyes still focused on the path the old giant had taken.

  When the corn had tasseled and eared, the coon family moved back to the red oak den for it was closer to this source of food than the basswood. It was with some reluctance that Procyon left the long grasses, protected pools and tangled avenues of the marshland.

  About four-thirty in the afternoon of a September day, Procyon was curled on the limb of the red oak. The air was cool as it came rushing through the woods, and Procyon shifted in his sleep, tucking his nose deeper into his fur. He was awakened by a beetle climbing up his nose toward his ear. He snapped at it, but it winged off and he dropped his head back to the limb to sleep. His eyes would not close. He found himself watching the limbs dip deeper and deeper as a storm circled the woods and emptied itself some miles to the north.

  He finally arose and climbed down the tree to the ground. His hind legs and haunches were well developed. They were longer than his forelegs and tilted his body forward, giving him the shape of a plump pear. They no longer wobbled when he walked but propelled him through the woods with agility and sent him galloping along the limbs of the trees as deftly as a squirrel. Procyon now weighed eight pounds. He was big, but not full grown or mature. Despite his power and versatility on land and in the trees, he was still a comedian. Masked and fuzzy, this harlequin of the woods was a limber acrobat. He hung by his hind legs from limbs, frisked along the narrow avenues of the trees, rolled and tumbled on the ground, and climbed hand over hand along low branches.

  Procyon was off to the stream this September afternoon. He ran and trotted toward the water, turning off the trail frequently to investigate a rattling leaf, a smell, a hollow log. At the edge of the stream he heard a noise behind him. He jumped to the foot of a tree, looked around, heard it again and galloped up a few paces.

  “Who-oo?” a voice called.

  “Who-oo,” Procyon answered. He turned around sideways and looked down at his sister who had followed him. Bracing himself with his chin he started down. He came down as always, head first. He hung by his big hind feet that curved snugly around the tree. With this support a forearm shot out, and back to his side. It took the weight while he brought the hind foot on that side forward. In this manner he climbed down to the base of the tree and ran to his sister. He nipped her on the ear and raced to the water. The sister buckled up, danced a few side steps in the leaves and chased after him.

  Side by side they took a long drink. Their chins seemed to float on the very surface of the water as they drank, for their lower jaws were so far behind their noses that if they had tried to lap like a dog their noses would have been submerged. Then they resumed their sparring again. Finally Procyon crossed the shallows to the roots of a sugar maple. The tree was being undermined by the creek and tilted across the stream at a forty-five degree angle. Its massive roots still retained the soil above, but were washed out below.

  The meandering creek had dug into the ground behind the roots leaving a cave barred by the grill work of interlacing roots. Procyon wove his way through this screen and splashed in the shallow water. This was one of his favorite hunting grounds for it was protected from the woodland; and into the net of roots came many creatures of the stream. After a brief survey of his cave, Procyon stuck his head out through a small opening in the lattice work. He looked brightly around the stream bed and watched his sister hunt water-food then run toward him. She slipped and soaked her tail and hind legs. Ears back, he wedged out through the grill and galloped along the shore. She pulled herself from the water and galloped after him.

  As he raced along, his antics frightened a minnow. It swam up the creek ahead of him, trying to escape, and stranded itself in a shallow rapid. Procyon pounced upon it as it flopped helplessly. He rolled it over and over in his paws, flipped it to the bank, jumped on it, picked it up in his teeth and tossed it into the sand. Again he grabbed it, then carried it ten feet up the bank. Here he lost it momentarily, found it again, bit it several times and carried back to the creek. At the spot where he had caught it, he rolled it over and over in the water as if he were washing it. He was merely feeling it in water just as he had felt it on land. Finally the fish became a pulpy mass that fell apart. The head and gills were carried away by the current. He ate the rest.

  Meanwhile his sister had felt her way up the stream beyond him and was crunching loudly on what seemed to be a stone, but what proved to be a fresh water mussel. She could not open it and dropped it. It rocked back to the bottom of the stream, scratched white where her little milk teeth had raked across it. But one tooth would never scratch again. Her vigorous bite had knocked it loose from its shallow socket. Where it had been was the gleaming white tip of her permanent canine tooth.

  About this time Gib’s herd of cattle came crashing through the woods to the creek for water. Procyon ran up a ten inch basswood that leaned over the stream. His sister went up a large silver maple. While the cattle drank below them the coons descended slowly. A cow at the foot of Procyon’s basswood caught his scent, looked up and snorted. Procyon, only a few feet above her wide twitching nostrils, turned around and went back up a short distance.

  A black heifer seeing the sister, crossed the creek and went to look at her. The raccoon spiraled to the other side of the tree and came around almost face to face with the heifer. Taken by surprise the heifer leaped backward and stumbled down the bank into the stream. Procyon galloped down the sloping basswood and ran for the base of the washed out maple. Before he could gain the protection of the tangled roots, the cow lowered her head and chased him some thirty feet into the woods trying to bunt him with her nose. The young cow stopped and stared at him. Procyon, unafraid, came toward her taking time to investigate every interesting sight along the woodland floor. The cow charged him again, but this time Procyon curved around her to the creek. He found his sister had also come back to the stream. Little disturbed by the herd, they climbed down the lattice work of roots and resumed their fishing. Several cows stood close together on the opposite bank and for a long time watched them curiously.

  When the cattle had wandered back toward the fields, the coons left the security of the maple root grill and worked up stream. After they tired of fishing they climbed a flaky barked sugar maple. They walked out onto the far ends of the branches and fingered the terminal shoots and buds. They dipped and swayed with the limbs as the wind rocked the young tree. Procyon and his sister pulled the twigs to their mouths and picked off the buds with their teeth. The leaves spiraled to the ground as they ate. Occasionally they pr
ied loose a sliver of bark and it plopped to the forest floor.

  Balancing on the pencil thin limbs they sparred and fought as easily as they did on the ground. Frolicking, swinging and hanging, the fat cubs entertained themselves on the zig-zag playground of the tree. Presently Procyon climbed high in the maple and settled his haunches in the sharp angle of a crotch.

  Draping his forepaws and head over the branch above, he fell asleep. His sister dozed in a fork below him.

  To the east along the horizon a gaudy moon was rising. The scent of goldenrod and milkweed was on the wind, and the air had a taste of nuts, grapes and plump berries. A great horned owl boomed from the forest to the north, and the eerie howl of a red fox was followed by silence.

  After an hour’s nap Procyon and his sister rejoined the family. The family feasted on the many woodland delicacies that comprised their varied taste. They enjoyed a wide assortment of foods; that of mice, of fish and water animals, nuts, corn, insects and all berries and succulent fruits. This night they dined from the stream to the highlands. They were ready to go home about midnight, but it was dawn before they reached the base of the big red oak and climbed to the den, for they wandered home slowly, checking each scent and sound. They stole quietly down into the hollow.

  One bright September night when the stars glittered through the tops of the trees like fireflies, and the air was so clear that each tree looked crisp and fresh, the coon family awoke and prepared themselves for hunting. Stretching and yawning, they gradually came to life. Procyon rolled his sister’s tail between his hands and scratched her stomach with his hind foot. He nipped her until she sputtered and then shoved his brother. His mother moved and Procyon reached out and tapped her check. She looked at him casually, then turned and climbed out of the den.

  Procyon rolled over on his back with his feet in the air and watched the others leave for their night trip through the September woods.

  Somewhat later he poked his head out of the den and smelt the night air. Slowly he climbed to the ground and joined the family in the cornfield. Procyon broke off an ear of corn with his nimble hands and peeled back the husk. Biting and chewing he devoured half of this and began on another when the scent of pheasant rode to him on the wind. He turned away quietly and traced the wind to its source. An old cock pheasant sleeping in a dense pocket of goldenrods and asters that grew along the edge of the field, awoke with a start as Procyon raked a corn stalk. The pheasant clattered into the darkness and flew blindly for the woods. Procyon looked after him. The wind carried off his scent and the coon turned to find his family.

  He picked up his mother’s trail and wove through the corn in search of her. She was sitting over an ear of corn that she held between her forepaws. As she wrinkled up her lips to sink her front teeth in the kernels, she saw her son galloping up the green corridor toward her. She did not stop eating but purred and pressed back her ears as Procyon rose to his back feet, touched her on the forearm then swung gently away. His brother was behaving strangely, and Procyon found his actions more interesting than his mother’s. He crossed into the next alley of corn passing through a cobweb that stuck to his black mask. His brother had a young meadow vole under his paw, and was nipping it as it scurried to get loose. When he saw Procyon he stopped playing with it, killed it quickly and ran down the furrow holding it in his teeth. Procyon chased him, overtook him and knocked his feet out from under him. He snatched the mouse and galloped to the next row of corn as his brother scrambled into action and came charging after him.

  While the raccoon family was raiding Gib’s cornfield, Ruff, the vagrant wild hound slipped under the gate at the end of the lane and stole toward the woods. He was lean and thin for he did not eat regularly. Occasionally he was fed by a family that lived on Ford Road, but for the most part he lived on mice in the fields, muskrats, woodchucks and anything he could hunt or steal.

  Ruff had no certain ancestry, he was a mixture of terrier, hound and others. During the day he stuck to the woods almost as wild as a fox or coyote. When he came near the farmhouses he did so with his tail between his legs and his head crouched. He hid from the farmers and was chased by their dogs.

  Ruff slunk down the lane to the woods, his nose pressed to the earth, trying to pick out the scent of some animal on the dry ground. He circled the sugar house and trotted up the ravine that ran west through the woods past the red oak den. Ruff turned around suddenly and jogged back a few steps. His tail stiffened as he came upon the trail of the coon family leading south to the cornfield.

  Ruff understood that the scent he was following was that of a raccoon. The hound knew from experience that the raccoon was a formidable animal and he stole along the trail silently without snapping a stick. Slinking close to the ground he followed the trail to the fence.

  Ruff became tense, he could hear the scrapping growls of Procyon and his brother as they fought over the mouse. They were just beyond the fence, four rows into the cornfield. Ruff glided under the fence, still silent.

  The brothers heard the fence rattle and as the dog crashed through the first row, they sped up the furrow toward their mother. Ruff strained into action, the exertion forcing a yipe from his throat. He gained rapidly on Procyon and his brother. With a snarl, Ruff sank his teeth into the fleshy hind leg of the brother. The brother rolled into the dusty earth and turned from the attacking hound. Ruff checked his speed and swung. He lunged again. With a howl the hound went down writhing and yelping in pain. With a vicious snarl the mother coon had caught the dog in complete surprise from the rear. By the time the hound had gathered his wits, the family followed by their mother was through the fence. Ruff bounced to his feet but followed them with less interest.

  The wire fence checked him long enough for the coons to put ten yards between them. The brother, slowed by his wounded leg, jumped to the first tree beyond the fence and scurried out of reach of the dog. The sisters who had had more time, had run into the woods about fifty yards before climbing a young maple. They were safely out of reach when their mother and Procyon passed them and took to the security of the next maple. Ruff followed them cautiously. He slid up to the tree and stopped. With tongue hanging from his mouth, he looked into the branches. The raccoons were safe in the trees. Ruff limped off.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS OCTOBER. The first frost had come to southern Michigan. The green faded from the leaves, leaving them red, rust and gold. Severed at their bases, each shift of the wind sent showers of them coasting to the forest floor.

  Gib and Joe had stored much of the corn in the silo and crib. Some was shocked in the fields. One eight acre strip along the woods stood untouched. Gib had sold this to a neighboring farmer who had not found time to cut it before the frost.

  Into the cornfield the coon family came almost every night. They ate corn kernels ravenously, for already the winds were blowing colder and they would need a good layer of fat to live upon during the winter.

  Late in October, Procyon left the family group and wandered out on his own. He crossed Gib’s woods to a grove of oaks that grew on a knoll to the west. Here he dined many nights on the nutritive acorns. He put on weight and his fur shone and glistened. Then he returned to the red oak to den a few nights with his brother and sisters.

  The following night he disappeared into the marshes for food and came upon a wild grape arbor. An old vine had twined itself over a giant poplar that grew along a marshland fence row. Procyon climbed the tree and from its great broad limbs gorged on grapes. The limbs forked and branched into the arbor. The raccoon swung along them, cramming the juicy purple fruits into his mouth with both hands. At times he supported himself only by his hind toes to reach far out and gather the biggest and ripest fruit. Only when he had had more than enough would he curl loosely along the limbs and sleep.

  One morning about four-thirty, Procyon came ambling back from the grape arbor to his home.

  He crawled down into the den. His mother and sisters were sleeping in the hollow, but his bro
ther was not there. Procyon spent the night with them, then journeyed out through the woodlands again. He wandered back to his hill of oaks and acorns. As he circled the hill inspecting the roots of the withering boneset and wild asters, he crossed his brother’s trail. Procyon walked back to smell it, then slowly circled up the slope through tangles of blackberries to the base of the first tree.

  The brother had denned here the night before. He had eaten well and this evening awoke early to scout for food. He, too, was eating continually, putting on fat and preparing himself for the winter. He had followed a ravine down the hill to the west. Zig-zagging, backtracking, then rushing forward he had circled the marsh, crossed Berry Road and was now plodding south along Flemming Creek. The brother found this stream rich with foods. Wild fruits grew along it, and into its shallows swam creek chubs and darters. The brother chased them to the pockets of water along the shore made by the drinking cattle, and pounced upon them.

  About a week later Procyon’s brother had traveled seven miles. He had come to the millpond in the rich bottomlands about half a mile above the point where Flemming Creek empties into the Huron River. Here he found an old basswood tree that met all his requirements. It had a hollow that was deep, snug and dry. The stream that raced to the river was about fifty yards away, and food was plentiful. The brother never went back to Gib’s farm.

  Meanwhile one of Procyon’s sisters had also left the old red oak home. She had gone east through the woodland, spending many nights in the marsh where Rook’s Creek spread out across the low lands. During the day she had found refuge in the stump of a dead willow, but she was not completely comfortable here, for the top was open wide to the weather, and the bottom of the hollow was too large and too moist. She left the marsh, crossed the road at the east end of the section to feed in the big cornfields. All night she ate kernels, stuffing, racing the weather.