Raccoon!
That night started out like any other. Thomas and Steve brushed their teeth and hopped into bed. Steve fell asleep right away, without waking up for any reason.

But Thomas couldn’t fall asleep. He lay there trying to go to sleep. Then he heard chewing. Thomas usually couldn’t hear his dog, Gibson, eating. Oh well, he’s probably really hungry tonight, he thought. But then he heard barking. Probably he wants to go to another room, he thought. Then he went to sleep.

The next morning was Saturday, so the boys got up and watched TV. They were watching when they heard their mom scream. The boys ran to see what was wrong. When the boys reached it, they said, “Oh, my goodness!” There was a big hole about one foot high and one foot wide. Then Thomas and Steve said together, “Gibson.”

Everybody looked at Gibson. The boys’ mother said, “Bad boy, Gibson. You are now sleeping in a cage.”

Gibson thought, I didn’t do it, a raccoon did it. I scared it away! Gibson started whimpering. Poor Gibson, having to get punished for nothing. But the family of course did not understand Gibson. So Gibson had to get punished.

That night was a hard one. The raccoon ate only a little bit, and poor Gibson couldn’t do anything about him.

Three weeks later the raccoon ate a whole lot, and poor Gibson couldn’t do anything. The family saw the bigger hole on the wall and looked at Gibson. Thomas saw that the lock was unlocked!

“Gibson!” the whole family said. “From now on you will sleep outside, and each one of us will make sure your gate is locked,” said Mother.

Three more weeks later the family made sure the gate was locked and went to bed. That night the raccoon came and ate a lot of the wall. The family was confused. The gate was locked. The family decided to just go with it, but the boys had a different idea.

That night the boys hid, and they saw the raccoon eating the wall and they videotaped the raccoon.

The next morning Thomas and Steve showed their parents the clip of the raccoon. Now the family knew what was wrong, what were they going to do about the raccoon? They decided to take it out to the middle of the forest.

For Gibson, they let him patrol the house, only barking when something bad happened. And never again did something bad happen because of good Gibson.