“You’ve never seen a possum or raccoon?” To us English they seemed exotic, even mythological like the duck-billed platypus or unicorn. “Possum’s are mean, ugly critters”. Raccoons only come out at night. If you see one in daylight keep away”.

“Why? Do they get a bit grumpy if they miss their sleep?”

“No, they’re probably rabid and will bite you”.

“We ought to go on a ‘coon hunt”.

My mind involuntarily flashed back to the days of slavery. Then I realised. “Those ‘coons had better watch out if we did”.

Beyond the golf course was a forest. “If we shone a torch in there we’d see little beady eyes shining back”. Unfortunately no torch but we knew the forest was teeming with wild life. We could hear them, billions of insects all rubbing their wings or back legs, or whatever they use to call to their mates. The noise was deafening. Couldn’t they find each other and shut up?

In fact, we did see a raccoon in daylight. Looked like a Davy Crocket hat lying in the road, flattened by a truck.

We turned back for a better look. We’d heard of a man who lived on nothing but roadkill. We thought we’d stick to spaghetti bolognese – though it did look similar.

Drew was particularly fond of the deer. He’d shine the car’s lights at them, honk the horn and yell. Nothing too rowdy. They’d look up, scowl and trot off into the undergrowth.

“We saw mountain lions up by Cooper’s Rock.” Matt looked disbelieving. These critters were as rare as seeing Drew with a full head of hair.

“But they were in cages.” Good job too as they kept stalking us as we walked.

We chased a coyote down the road at dead of night. This was at the cabin deep in the West Virginian Forest and we were in the car, of course. It ran for about a mile in our headlights. It sure looked like a coyote. Must have been a coyote? Yes?

We sat on the balcony. The thing looked like a giant bee. It shot up from no-where, looked us up and down, then darted off. A humming bird. What a cutey. You couldn’t help but smile. This was at Ohio Falls where crazy children throw themselves down mountain streams for fun risking broken limbs and cracked skulls. Drew, no doubt, was itching to have a go. Beautiful place, though.

The strangest wild life we saw were 2 bipeds (greatly ressembling Hannah and Drew) rampaging fully dressed under the lawn sprinklers at the golf course. Oh yes, there’s plenty of wild life in West Virginia. Most of it we took in the car with us.