Last Thursday, during a quiet moment after a workshop I was sitting at the
edge of a beaver pond at the NW stream center in Mill Creek, when a duck
starting repetitively quacking without stop. Quack, quack quack...over and
over. I moved to where I could see the duck and saw a raccoon at the edge of
the water. The duck was following the raccoon, swimming about a raccoons
length away along with the raccoon. After a bit the raccoon took to the
water, swimming along the edge of the pond. The duck stayed parallel to the
raccoon, still about 2 feet distance, constantly quacking. The raccoon went
ashore backtracked and went into the water again, this time going further
from shore than before. The duck paralleled as before. The Raccoon then
slowed down and the duck got ahead of it, then turned around and came back
the other direction, facing towards the raccoon but still a couple feet
distance. To my astonishment, as the duck came parallel to the raccoon the
mammal leapt out of the water, causing the duck to yell a different sort of
quack, which sounded much like a YIKES! in duck language. However the
raccoon really did not get very close and the duck flew up and did a couple
laps around the pond, quacking faster and louder, kind of like saying BAD
RACCOON, BAD. It landed and quacking constantly, went back into its shadow
the raccoon mode, this time staying three feet or so apart from the bad
raccoon. The raccoon, no doubt as tired of the constant monotonous quacking
as I was, rambled downstream past the beaver dam and out of view. The duck
then flew upstream to the 4 youngsters who greeted the parent with much
excited piping and cheeping.

Later, curious about how a raccoon leaps out of water, I walked over to that
side of the pond and discovered a submerged log. The clever raccoon had swam
up to the log, then stayed crouched down, keeping a swimming motion and
profile all the while slowly walking along the log. Clever trickster that
raccoon. Just not quite good enough at jumping.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer, Teacher
Maltby, WA

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