Having food stolen

Several years ago I started dating a man who had never been camping before (I have since learned that this is now a deal breaker in relationships, by the way. What guy worth anything hasn't been camping??!!!)

Anyway, I couldn't convince him to try a short backpack trip, so we did a car camping thing at a state park somewhere along the California coast. He was actually quite excited, and spent a lot of money on food. Man food. Bacon. A lot of bacon.

We set up camp and after dinner started putting things away. The two of us struggled to hoist the very large, unwieldy picnic table on top of the cooler to keep it secure from thieving beasts. Er, raccoons. I was actually a bit worried we were going to dent the cooler, but he was quite happy with the set up (his cooler…his bacon…his call).

The next morning we awoke to a glorious sunrise, beautiful weather…and went out to make coffee and, well, bacon. The picnic table was where we left it, but the cooler was gone. We found it down the hill past our campsite, all the contents strewn all the way down the hill…and no bacon.

I hate squirrels. I know it's illogical, but I just hate them.

I was at the end of the trail out of Sunrise in Mount Rainier NP one day- I forget if it was at First Burroughs or Second Burroughs- it was the one with the big stacked stone bench to sit on. I had sat down to have my lunch and had set my drugstore-bought disposable camera beside me. Shortly, the most portly Rock Squirrel I had ever seen waddled over and grabbed the camera! I guess he thought it was edible or something. So here I am, a grown man arguably in the top 1% of most educated people on the planet, chasing a morbidly obese Rock Squirrel across the scree, screaming in a high-pitched girlish squeal for him to give me my camera back. I'm certain that there were a few teenage girls giggling at my ridiculousless that day.

When he paused for breath I seized the free end of the camera, and of course he clamped all four claws onto the rock he was sitting on and refused to let go of his end. We did a tug-of-war for a few seconds, and then the little ba$tard had the cheek to GROWL at me- still with the camera clenched in his incisors, mind you. Seriously- I damned near picked up that rock via the camera and attached growling squirrel.

Eventually, of course, I won, though not uninjured. It was a gargantuan struggle- some day surely epic poetry shall be written about it. When the movie rights are sold I would prefer that I be played by Chris Hemsworth.

Then, predictably, I returned to my pack to discover that his accomplice had made off with my peanut-butter cups…

If there is any justice in the world they have both long since succumbed to coronary artery disease as a sequela of their poor diet.