One of the first things the raccoons do when you drive into the campground is check out your car. To them, your car is a rough indication of what kind of food you have. They make notes on their little clipboards. A minivan pulls in. They write, "Kids. Watch for potato chip and Cheerios spillage, plus neglected half-eaten meals. Begging is a go." Then a beater truck with a lot of firewood drives in. "Beer and steaks, plus tub of Safeway potato salad." Then an SUV. "Watch for excess and waste. The garbage can will be a gold mine." When an older Subaru or Volvo rolls in they jot "Vegetarian."

They're not always right, but it doesn't really matter. They're taking it all.

They get a good look at you as you circle around the campground choosing a spot. They know it's hard for you to pick one because there are so many factors. Privacy. Shade. Level spot for a tent. Distance from bathrooms and kids and motorhomes with loud generators and televisions. To make it even more nerve-wracking, there are other campers circling and choosing too, so you're engaged in a vehicular form of musical chairs. By the time you pick a spot and park, the raccoons are already there. They knew which one you'd settle on. They can tell by your car and your haircut.

They're the locals and in their small black eyes you're no more than caterers. They say, "We'll watch your stuff" as you walk back to the entrance to register your spot. They peek into the windows and make more notes.

The raccoons kick back while you unload the vehicle and see how you screwed up packing this time. Maybe you brought five gallons of cooking fuel, but forgot the stove. Maybe you spaced the knife, or the pillows, or the poles for the tent. If you forget matches, you have to roll up a piece of paper, light it with the car's cigarette lighter, and try to carry it back to the fire pit before it goes out. The raccoons really enjoy watching that. "The Olympics!" they scream, and expose their little bellies as they laugh.

Once you're set up, you can take a nice walk around the campground to check out the neighbors. It's like walking around any other neighborhood, except the walls are invisible. You can look right into their home life, which is pretty boring at a campsite: reading, cooking, playing cards. The invisible walls come with invisible doors, which is where you go when you want to talk to a neighbor. You go to the invisible door, usually by their car, and say, "Hello" or "Knock knock!" The raccoons walk right through these walls. They have superhuman powers.

When you start cooking dinner, the attack begins. Elite commando raccoons with berets creep up and liberate any foodstuffs outside your immediate field of vision.

Once you notice half the rolls are gone, your Campsite Security Advisory System goes to code yellow: High. You move all your food very close to you, and post magazine readers around the perimeter. It works. For now.

Cooking dinner in a campground is challenging enough without dealing with masked scamps running off with the goods. You've got no sink, bad lighting, and mosquitoes. If you've started a campfire, the smoke may serve as an insect repellant, but the light of the flames makes it hard to see into the darker corners of the campsite, where the raccoons work, and where it's training time.

Baby raccoons are instructed in the pilfering arts when the sun has gone down and you're finishing dinner. The little ones are noisier and clumsier, and need the advantage of darkness. You're more lethargic after you've eaten, so you try to ignore the noises for a while, but eventually you hear them trying to use the can opener, and enough is enough. You get up and you say something goofy like "Hyah!" or "Git!" or "Shoo!"

After a few rounds of this, you notice that mere words don't hurt them, so you gather some little sticks and stones. But this tactic isn't very satisfying either. For one thing, they're absurdly easy to hit. For another, they don't seem to care.

After you go to bed, your food will be stolen unless it's in sturdy boxes with lids and 200 pound weights on top. Even then, you'll hear them working on the problem for much of the night. They'll be nibbling at the boxes, trying to tip them over, and attempting to pick the locks with the wire coat hangers you were using to roast marshmallows.

In the morning, as you sip your coffee, they'll be sleeping off their little binge. You might find yourself short a package of graham crackers and a few beers, but in the sun-dappled light of a new day, you'll find it in your heart to forgive the little recidivists, with their larcenous souls and built-in burglar masks.