The Black Mask

In our first two summers of paddling the Great Lakes, we had very few problems with animals trying to get into our food barrels. We never had to hang our food barrels in trees and would often leave them in the canoe far away from the tent. The odd squirrel or seagull would beg us for little bits of trail mix but both these animals couldn't open our food caches. This year, while paddling into more populated areas, we have been surprised to encounter one cute animal that has, with their tiny fingers, opened the latch of our canoe barrels. While dozing off to sleep one night at Point Farms Provincial Park, we heard a loud bang as one of our barrels rolled off the picnic table onto the ground. We stumbled out of the tent and to find that a large raccoon had managed to open the latch but was struggling to get the lid off. Knowing that we would get little sleep if we left them there, we hung our barrels for the first time in 135 nights of camping.