We've become night owls of late. Staying up late into the night to busy ourselves with relaxing occupations, and trekking upstairs to bed into the morning hours. Last night my husband remembered, after a busy day, that he had meant to put on a bread for himself for breakfast consumption. He had been viewing one of those British mysteries he favours on his little laptop, when it occurred to him, at ten in the evening to dispatch himself into the kitchen and start the bread machine on a crusty white loaf.

He doesn't like to leave the bread in the machine after the baking has concluded, preferring to take it out right after the process has been completed, allowing the bread to cool on the counter so that its crust will develop crisply and not become moist, left in the machine overnight. So we were even later than usual going up to bed.

I started upstairs around half-past midnight to wash up for the night. On my way to the staircase glancing outside through the full-length glass window in our front door. I often do this, to catch a last look at the out-of-doors, our porch, the winter-frozen trees lapped with freshfallen snow, on my way upstairs. This time I caught a fleeting glance of something moving, and I looked again. Thought I saw a cat, a dark grey cat, making its way up the front walk, somewhat to the side, so it wasn't clearly visible. It continued until it reached the step leading to the porch and effortlessly leaped onto the porch. What I had taken at first to be a cat - no, a dog - no, a cat - turned out to be a raccoon.

I called my husband over from the family room to the foyer so he too could take pleasure in a close-up view of the raccoon. A juvenile raccoon, we judged, from its size and colouration, and busy scoping out the front of our house. It soon became aware that we were watching it, and made its leisurely way over to stand directly in front of the door, peering within, raising himself gracefully on his hind legs, front paws lifted before itself, to look more closely at us, and try to sniff out our presence.

We felt singularly privileged by the encounter. I even felt the impulse to open the door, speak softly to the creature, offer something to eat, but knew better. Soon he ambled off, going down the walk the same way he had gone up it to reach the porch. We knew he would most likely make his way to the backyard, to open the compost bin we're currently using. And sure enough, when my husband later took our little dog out for his end-of-night evacuation before bedtime, the lid of the composter was off, so my husband placed it back.

And, when he repeated the procedure of taking our little dog out first thing in the morning, the lid was off again. A good night for raccoons.