Through the 1980s, we owned a cottage in Dennis Port, on Cape Cod. We had many great times there. It was a small place. I used to say it had 1 1/2 bedrooms, and the small bedroom was so small that you had to hang the curtains on the outside of the windows!

We would use the cottage from April to the first of November every year.

This tale takes place the second or third year we owned the cottage, We got a late start after work and arrived around 7 p.m. that April night to open up the cottage. The only heat we had was a stove in the fireplace. I hooked up the water meter in the meter pit, went out in the road with my wrench and turned on the water. We lit the stove and went to the Cream and Cone restaurant for some fried clams.

We got back to the cottage around 9 p.m. It had been a long day, so we went to bed.

There wasn’t even a crawl space under the place, just a few inches of space above the ground.

We no sooner got into bed when there was a scratching noise directly under the bed. Oh, no — we have a squatter under the cottage, Hope it’s a raccoon and not a skunk. We’ll find out in the morning.

As we did projects the next day, I kept an eye out for the intruder. I had found where he had gained entrance, and I had dirt and rocks ready to fill in the hole.

Around dusk, I spotted the raccoon ambling toward the woods. I went out and quickly filled in the entrance hole. We went to bed that night and immediately heard a mewling noise under the bed. Oh, no! There are little ones under the cottage, too. Out I went and removed the dirt so Mom raccoon could get back to her little ones.

Next time we went to the cottage, we were going to stay for three nights. On our first night, we heard “Momma” come in. On the second night when she came in, all we could smell was skunk. We spent a very long night and went home early the next day.

The next week, we passed our time at the cottage doing projects, and there were no more interruptions from our family of squatters.

A week later, the first morning we were there, I spotted “Mom” and four little ones ambling across the backyard into the woods. Like a flash, I was out back sealing the entrance hole with dirt and rocks. The squatters were evicted.

We kept the cottage a few more years before we bought a place in Maine, minus any squatters.