Vicki Cameron, optician at Sequim Vision Clinic, moved from Southern California to Sequim in 2009 with her husband, Garry, and their daughter, Kristina.

She related what happened when she and her daughter entered into a stare-down with Northwest wildlife.

“One afternoon my daughter and I were just sitting and talking at our dining room table, and all of a sudden we saw a raccoon in the backyard staring in at us with those big brown eyes. So what we did was we tried to shut the screen door because it was open and we were kind of scared and we didn’t know what to do. I had never seen a live raccoon before in my life and neither had my daughter.

So I called my husband at work. He wasn’t there, but the secretary answered the phone, and I was sort of hysterical, and I said, ‘Bev, we’re sitting here and there’s a raccoon out there staring at my daughter and me with those big brown eyes, and we’re just kind of scared. Do we get animal control to take that raccoon out of my backyard patio?’

She just laughed at me and said, ‘We don’t do that here. You’re not in Southern California any more. They live in this town, so they’re going to go ahead and walk away. Don’t be scared. Just close your door.’

When we closed the door it just stayed and put its face up against the screen and tried to get in. So we were trying to chase it away, saying, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’

The raccoon just stayed there! It put its face against the screen and wouldn’t go away. ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ was not going to work.

We didn’t want to move because it might get scared and come closer. My husband’s secretary had told us there was probably some food around the neighborhood in a garbage can somewhere and the raccoon had just brought its lunch into our patio.

And about a week later my husband and I were walking the waterfront trail in Port Angeles and saw another raccoon under the bridge down there. I didn’t know there were raccoons that lived there in town. And you don’t call animal control for those things, either!

That first raccoon scared the heck out of us. After that my daughter and I tried to keep the screen shut in the summertime.”

Everyone has a story and now they have a place to tell it. Verbatim is a first-person column that introduces you to your neighbors as they relate in their own words some of the difficult, humorous, moving or just plain fun moments in their lives. It’s all part of the Gazette’s commitment as your community newspaper. If you have a story for Verbatim, contact editor Michael Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.