Wild critter inside

OK, mice in the walls we have always, sometimes squirrels in the attics. But today as I was piling wood from the outside store inot a wheelbarrow "Nokade" (family canine) went berserk. Tearing up and down the drive sniffing the snow, dashing inot the barn and out, just like a pup instead of the 15 year old man that he is. Finally on one of his dashes inot the barn I see something largish moving in front of him.

So I called Penny out and between us we got him onto lead and into the house. Penny then went into the barn to investigate only to be spoken with by a raccoon. I told Penny to come out because while late afternoon, still bright out, and 'coons are nocturnal. OK if got caught away from home last night when the snow got heavy and decided to shelter in our barn and was waiting for dark to leave. But not so OK if wandering abroad by day since any mammal acting strangely, we have to consider possibly rabid.

A couple of wheelbarrows later I saw him (or her) leave the barn, amble down our drive, cross the covered bridge to the road, and turn up the road. Moving pretty normally and not strange behavior keeping to the good footing rather than taking off cross country as about 15 cms of very heavy/wet snow so would be a hard slog (we had our drive shovelled and the road has been plowed)