Special Visitor @ The Shop

We had this gem of a boat come in last week. There really wasn't anything out of the ordinary about it for us. It was an abandoned boat at a local marina. The paperwork had been cleared and the boat was towed to our shop to be stripped. We took the cover off of it and the inside was trashed... The seats were tore up, the side panels were chewed out and there was animal feces in the boat. The boat was pretty bad, but it was still nothing unusual for us.

We kept the boat in the main shop for the night and started fresh on it in the morning. We had two guys on dismantling the boat and 2 guys running the eBay side of the day. We had joked about something living in the boat and pointed out fresh feces... still not thinking anything was odd about it. We took a break from the boat and one of our guys headed upstairs to put some parts away. As he was putting a trailing arm into the top shelf, he was HISSED at. It didn't sink in until this image came into focus.....

That was it for him! He came hustling down the stairs speaking pretty calmly for what had happened. He said, "Uh guys, we have a little issue upstairs you may want to come see." Mike and I could not possibly imagine what kind of issue there could be UPSTAIRS. Of all places in the shop, upstairs would be the LAST place we could have an issue. "We have a raccoon" was the next thing he said. I still did not believe him.

He was serious all right, and it was a HUGE raccoon at that. We had never had this issue at the shop so we had NO experience in this situation. We called the Lakemoor Police and got a number for a wildlife catcher, but did not have to make that call. With the help of Northwest Performance's Ian and North Shore Designs' Eric, we were able to convince the raccoon to leave out the bay door of the main shop... that's not the end of the story.

The raccoon leaves the shop and hangs a sharp left turn and runs down the side of the building... and right into the open bay door of shop #2. After about 20 minutes of chasing him around the sleds and bikes in that shop, we were able to get him back outside. This time he ran through the parking lot and chose a tree on the grassy berm.

This was the FIRST time we had a visitor like this at the shop. We shared the whole experience as it unraveled with our Facebook friends and got a lot of suggestions. We also have been told that we have a new mascot. Our customers know us so well. When something like this happens, we embrace it. So, we have changed the name of Bk Boat n Sleds to....

And I would also like to introduce to you "Boss Hoss" the BK Raccoon.

Boss Hoss says,
"Thanks for Reading and Don't Forget to Share on Twitter and Facebook"