RACCOON

You never know what is going to happen at the Ledges. A week and a half ago we had a church youth group from Pella in the campground. It was a group of 30 and as far as we could tell there was only one adult with them. On Saturday night (12:30 a.m.) 4 of the boys decided to trap a raccoon. They set a snair and baited it with some chips and caught a raccoon. It was caught by one leg and hanging from a tree. The boys said they couldn't stand seeing it hanging there, so decided to put it out of it's misery. One of the boys picked up a board and hit the coon a couple of times but didn't kill it. Another boy picked up the board and hit the coon a couple more times and they finally killed the coon. They did this in front of other campers and they raised a lot of noise. Before long night security, the park ranger, and a deputy sheriff was here. The 4 boys were fined and given a big lecture. I wouldn't want to be the boys when they told their parents or when they got back to the church.



That same weekend the other host (Art) was watching kids carrying things into the primitive sites when out came some drums and guitars. He decided it was time to check things out. He rode his bike back into the sites and they had set up 6 tents on one site (you can only have 1 tent per site) and there were 25 + people on the site (you can only have 6 per site). One of the gals said they should make some phone calls and tell people not to come. You just don't know what is going to happen in our backyard.