Raccoons are persistent at Tomoka park
By Stephen Raymond/For The Tampa Tribune

Area campgrounds

ORMOND BEACH - The raccoons here at Tomoka State Park are more secretive and more aggressive than we've found them anywhere on this trip.

We've seen only two. One, a fatty, was only 6 or 8 feet above the ground when we saw it coming headfirst down a tall cabbage palmetto. All we saw of the other were two red eyes peering at us from a saw palmetto hunting blind, but we have ample proof they surround us.

Each night we hear them; each day the residue of their prowling stares at us around garbage cans along with their unmistakable tracks around our front door and on our camp table.

They are like the old hermit I once knew who lived in isolation on Perico Island west of Bradenton.

You might not see him when you neared his hideaway but you didn't have to guess if he was around. He boasted he couldn't remember the last time he had taken a bath.

``Don't need one,'' he said. ``I can't smell myself.''

A couple of nights ago a 'coon tried to get in our pop-up camper and chewed a hole in the screen in its frustration.

One was on the roof. How it got there is a mystery since we are not close to trees or shrubbery.

Another, following yesterday's bait shrimp scent, pulled the floating bait bucket out of its carrier by the table. Another dug under the wall of our neighbor's dining tent while they slept nearby in a pop-up. The burglar deftly opened a hard plastic cooler and then invited its friends to the picnic. They grabbed a large cooked ham, clawed open a half gallon of orange juice, and in general trashed everything in the cooler.

After the assault on our pop-up, we took immediate measures to discourage further raids. But nightly we hear 'coons growling, hissing and snarling as they prowl our site and those nearby in anticipation.

I'd been propping our chairs, a folding webbed aluminum one and a director's chair, against the side of our camper. But I took down this platform for seeing in and leaned the chairs against our picnic table.

We moved our table, too. It had been under a canopy, close to the door. It's far enough away now that the 'coons can't jump from it to the other chair ledge.

Who knows what they were after, except that the sink held our plates from the evening meal. Everything else inside the pop-up was in containers except bread and doughnuts. Each of these may have emitted odors the 'coons thought worth checking.

None of these odors attracted marauders in the past, but then we weren't dealing with Tomoka 'coons that find the campground a veritable Publix when all 95 campsites are occupied by winter residents.

Tomoka State Park is one of Florida's oldest, yet it is still a premier park.

Only a few miles from Ormond Beach, the Atlantic Ocean and Daytona Beach, it is heavily wooded and shaded by huge oaks with saw palmetto and other small shrubbery providing privacy for each site.

Tomoka nestles on a peninsula with the Tomoka River on the west and the Halifax River on the east.

Several docks are on the Tomoka River for fishing and numerous paths lead to the Halifax.

My chicken necks and string tossed into the Halifax interested nothing. My wife, Marie, hauled in, after a considerable struggle, a sizable catfish, but with this much water there has to be fish here other than the buzzards of the sea that keep the bottom clean.

Our efforts to find blue crabs were disappointing until the day before we left when we found the nursery. We quickly put half a dozen keeper crabs into our bucket and released a couple dozen babies.

I've prowled the shoreline looking for crabs and wasted my time when there was no reason to put my chicken necks in the water, but this day was different.

The place looked crabby, the bottom was black and soft. The water was shallow and warm. If my nose had been in better working order I might have smelled them.

I knew I'd found the nursery when I threw out my line and pulled it back immediately when it didn't go where I wanted it to and a crab was hanging on, fighting to keep this hunk of meat that had fallen from the sky.

We limited our crabbing to half an hour because the sun was searing.

To get to our fishing spot, take Old Dixie Highway past the park and across the Tomoka River. A savanna of grass and muddy tidal canals only a few inches deep line both sides of the causeway. The crabs are thick here, but not many are the legal five inches from carapace point to point.

While exploring west of Bunnell, we found an excellent fishing lake with camping facilities, a restaurant and guide services.

AREA CAMPGROUNDS