Skunks!

So this year I got to participate in mini-webelos camp.  A Sunday through Tuesday adventure that is in retrospect set up to prepare the boys for Boy Scout summer camp.  The camp site is set up using the same equipment as the Boy Scouts

The biggest difference being that they don’t cook for themselves.  Thankfully.

The schedules and activities are set up in a similar fashion

One other thing that amazed me was how crowded it was. 

I tried swimming on the first day, but there was so much chlorine in the pool that my skin reacted very badly to it.  I’d guess that there was enough chlorine that the public health department would have been upset, but from my perspective, it was better than the alternative of people possibly getting sick.

I was told that we were in the biggest group of the summer and that there we’re 350 or so cub scouts. 

350!

350 – 9 year old boys in one place is deserving of a reserved place in whichever level of hell includes total chaos.  I managed not to get a full picture of the dining hall, and have been trying not to remember it ever since.  350 kids and the associated adult leaders all eating in one place at the same time is… not something to dwell on.

On Monday the kids rolled out of bed at 520am, and lights out was 10pm.  It was kind of warm that day; the official high was 106. 

The kids all passed out which was a good thing for a couple of reasons.  The two troops that we shared our campsite with had adult leaders that made some puzzling choices.  One group moved their scouts’ cots out of the tents, and put them in rows under the rain fly.  I assume that it was because they thought it would be cooler.  Not fifteen minutes after all the kids fell asleep, while I was getting myself ready for bed a momma skunk and her kits were taking a late night stroll through our campsite, and walked directly under all of those cots that had sleeping kids on them.  How do I know that they were skunks? 

It was dark, so I walked a little closer get a better look, and was rewarded with a tail up, sideways dance by mom.  I have no idea how far a skunk can spray.  Thankfully I still don’t.

Then sometime in the wee hours of the morning we got our nightly raccoon visit.  Someone, not in our pack, left a can of cheese pringles out on a table.  I didn’t hear the raccoon open and start eating them, but when someone did and tried to shoo it off all it did was hiss at them.  Those were some tasty pringles!  When they went for the walking stick and started beating the table to run it off I was sitting up in my cot, hoping that none of the kids woke up.  They didn’t.  When the raccoon finally ran it went right around my tent.  It was likely no more than 3 feet from Jacobs head.