Rant: the time a raccoon at a campsite taught me to stop doomscrolling

I was camping up near Lake Placid last summer and couldn't sleep, so I was lying in my tent scrolling through bad news at 2am. Heard this rustling outside and peeked out - a fat raccoon was staring right at me through the mesh, holding a stolen granola bar. I swear it looked annoyed like I was wasting my time. Now I put my phone in my backpack before zipping up the tent. Has anyone else had a random animal call them out on their bedtime habits?

2 comments

2 Comments

lindal131d agoMost Upvoted

Nah, that raccoon was probably just mad you were in its spot. Animals don't care about your phone habits. You're giving way too much credit to a wild animal that was just looking for food. If anything, the raccoon was the one wasting time stealing granola bars instead of finding real food in the woods. Doomscrolling is dumb, sure, but a raccoon isn't some wise teacher. It's just a fat rat with a stripe. You could have gotten a great story out of that night by filming it instead of turning it into some life lesson.

paulmitchell1d ago

Wait, isn't that exactly what happened to me last summer at a campsite in the Smokies? I was sitting on a log scrolling through Twitter (dumb, I know) and this huge raccoon just walked right up, gave me this total stink eye, then grabbed my bag of chips off the bench. It didn't care one bit about my phone or my "lesson" - it just wanted the sour cream and onion. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get a video of it rummaging through my cooler, and honestly that footage is way more fun to watch than some deep thought about nature. Sometimes a raccoon is just a raccoon, you know?