About 20 years ago, I was sitting in a comfy chair reading Whitley Strieber's Contact. I was in an upper floor room, late at night with a small reading light shining on my book, tucked into a corner chair next to the window that sat over the lower floor mud room. We had been rebuilding the house, and the window wasn't finished being framed in -- there was insulation stuffed into the empty spaces between the window frame and the house framing.

A small plate of home made peanut butter cookies was sitting balanced on the arm of my chair. As I sat reading, creeped out by the book, a small, black hand thrust through the insulation stuffing under the window ledge and groped wildly for the cookies.

I jumped up, plate of cookies flying and the big racoon outside the window went head over heals across the mud room roof.