A scratch in the night

We were awakened about 5:15 this morning by some kind of scratching noise at our exterior bedroom door.  Icy was sitting there looking out and Jerry thought it might have been her so he put her out in the kitchen and shut the bedroom door.  Then there was more scratching.  That's a little more aggressive than Barney usually is but maybe he was really hungry this morning.  Or maybe it  was the new (or stray) dog in the neigborhood-it had followed me around in the afternoon and scratched at the garage door when I went inside.  So Jerry got up to look again and at first thought it was Lefty (our other barn cat-who is gray).  Then he turned on the light and much to our surprise it was a large raccoon!  And he did not seem particularly concerned at the two open-mouthed humans staring at him from the other side of the glass.  After a few minutes he casually crawled under the deck.  Swell.  Now we have to be on the lookout for some raccoon, maybe with distemper or rabies to get in the back yard with the dogs or fighting the barn cats.

But, when time to actually get out of bed rolled around, a quick inspection of the premises revealed no raccoon.  Even so, we didn't let the dogs stay out very long this morning.  I haven't seen him again today which is fine.  Still don't know why he was trying to get in the house though.