Stormy Weather
by Thomas Gillespie

The sun rose slowly in the east, spreading its warmth over the entire forest.  Various creatures stirred from their long night's sleep to greet the morning.  Today was an important day in the forest for every creature indeed.  Today was the first day of the best week of the year.  The week that the humans came to watch the mountains bloom in the many colorful flowers that littered the country side.  They always came during the first week of spring, when the countryside was the most beautiful.  Of course, with them they brought food.  Lots and lots of food.  For some reason, the humans always brought more food then they needed, which was perfect for the animals of the forest, because they were more than happy to help the humans in eating their extra supplies.  The birds and squirrels were partial to the nuts that the people threw everywhere, as if it were fun to waste food.  The bears, on the other hand, liked anything sweet.  Candy, soda pop, anything with sugar was for them.  Indeed, many animals of the woods enjoyed taking advantage of the abundance of food that came along with the humans.  There was one group of animals, however, that loved it the most.  These animals always eat what they want, not caring if it is in the trash, on a table ready to be eaten, or even appetizing whatsoever.  These magnificent creatures are raccoons.  The move into the areas where the humans stay, usually in groups of three or four, and raid every possible area where anything edible might be.  The humans seemed to like the coons the least.  Whenever they would see them come near, they would quickly scare them away or even try to harm them.  Needless to say, the coons did not like this behavior, but this usually only happened to the younger raccoons, the ones who do not know the humans schedules or habits.  The older, wiser coons knew when to invade the camps and they knew exactly where to look for the best bits of food.
Today was a very special day for one raccoon in particular.  A young coon that would be attending his very first raiding party.  He would accompany his older siblings to a nearby human encampment and come back with food for his family.  Of course, no beast was expecting him to get much, this was his first raid after all.  It was rather a training session, for the young animal to learn the ropes of foraging so he could become a good raider when he's older.  The party consisted of three raccoons.  The two older ones, Barka and Friss were to lead their younger brother, Pred, to a human camp.  It was late at night when the three brothers set out.  The moon hung full in the sky, basking the land with a soft blue light.  The air was warm, a nice reminder that spring was upon them.  Trees rose up in every direction like huge wooden monoliths.  The very size of them daunted Pred as he and his brothers skittered across the forest floor.  The young coon was shivering with excitement.  He tittered to his two brothers in a hyper voice.  "Hey, Barka, Friss, what are humans like?  Are they nice, are they cute?  I've never seen a human, but I'm not scared.  Nope, not me, I-"
"Shhh!  Be quiet, they might hear you." cut in Barka.  The tree coons peered trough a bush into the human encampment.  The small clearing contained many wondrous structures.  There was a large canvas pyramid, from which a slight orange glow could be seen as silhouettes moved about from the inside.  Next to that structure was a huge blue box, from which all three raccoon brothers could smell delicious things coming from within.  "We can't get into that one Pred, it has some sort of spell on it that makes it so we can't open it." explained Friss, turning to his young sibling.  Pred gave a serious face to show he was paying attention.  Slowly, Friss and Barka slunk forward, avoiding every twig and dry leaf as possible to keep their noise levels down.  Pred smiled excitedly and bounded forward, causing a great amount of ruckus as he stumbled though the dry leaves.  Barka and Friss turned around sharply and shushed their younger brother in unison.  Embarrassed, Pred stopped and scrunched up his body with his ears flat to his head.  Barka and Friss rolled their eyes and continued forward.  Pred waited a little while before continuing forward, taking his precious time to avoid every noise causing object on the forest floor.  Eventually, the young coon reached where his brothers were waiting.  Before them stood a tall silver cylinder that reeked of deliciousness.  Pled stared up at the wonderful object in awe.  His brothers, on the other hand, had jumped up onto the top of the object.  Pled gave an excited squeel and leaped up onto the can along with his brothers.  Together, they pulled of the heavy metal disk that covered the goodies within.  The resulting clatter made the three coons freeze and look around, making sure the humans had not been alerted.  After there was no apparent movement from the people, Friss gave a quiet chuckle and turned back to the trash.  "Now, young brother, this is a wonderful gift that the humans leave for us.  There is one problem though.  The humans don't like us taking the gift when they are around.  I think they like it to remain anonymous.  We take what we want, so dig in." and the three coons leaped into action, eating their fill of delicious trash.  Apple cores, burnt meat, fish guts, rotten vegetables and more were found by the brothers.  After they had eaten everything they had wanted, they continued to gather food for the rest of the family.  "Now, Pled, the biggest rule of the foraging party is that the ones who go to get the food get the best of it.  The rest we take back to the family, no, gather everything that looks edible."  
The coons began gathering every bit of food they could carry.  Pled, being small, was able to burrow into the trash to the bottom of the can and search for more exotic things, namely fast food that the humans may had had on the first day before they arrived at their camp and threw away.  He did not find any thing of that sort, but he did find something far more valuable.  Pled reemerged from his trash dive, where Friss and Barka were waiting on the edge of the can.  Pled let out a full hearted laugh and held up a crumpled ball of tin foil.  It was the shiniest thing that they had ever seen.  The moon light reflected off of its many creases, throwing out a faint glowing aura of white light.  Friss made a grab for it, but Pled pulled it back and bit his brother's paw.  "No way Friss, you know the coon code." he said sternly.  Friss groaned angrily.  He indeed know the coon code, the universal code held between all raccoons stating that all objects found are the property of the coon that found it and may only be given out by said raccoon.  Pled stuck out his tongue in a childish raspberry and hugged his foil ball tightly.  Friss grunted in an irritated fashion and all three of them jumped of the silver can and made a mad dash for the woods.  Pled smiled to himself.  He felt like the luckiest coon on earth as he felt his shiny treasure between his fingers.