I've talked before about all the harbor seals in the neighborhood, whom I see regularly when I go out kayaking. Then there's the deer I sometimes see when I go out bike riding.
We also have raccoons. And the other night we discovered, to our horror, that apparently they can swim.
Around midnight we heard screeching and splashing. At first we thought it was cats, but that didn't account for all the splashing. A seal perhaps? But this shallow? We poked our heads out the window and shined our flashlights on the water. And there, in the shadows, we saw three raccoons, diving, fighting, screeching, splashing, and then running off in different directions. Alarmingly, one of those directions was up on the floating dock next to our boat.
One of the roommates had once had a dream about a raccoon coming in through the window, so in defense of this now-shared nightmare I ran around making sure all the windows were shut. Although on retrospect I wonder why I thought ensuring the door was locked was also somehow a necessary measure to take against a raccoon invasion...