Typically, if a masked bandit jumps on the hood of your moving car, it's a cause for alarm.

But for a family driving home from Clarksville recently, it was a cause for howls of laughter and a quick video. Their hood-surfing bandit was of the furry, four-legged variety: a raccoon.

Haylee Lowry, 16 — who'd gotten her license just two days earlier — was driving the family home to Big Sandy, Tennessee, after her basketball team practice in Clarksville May 16.

It was a long drive after dark, so her dad, Ronald Lowry, was asleep in the back seat, while her mom, Michelle Lowry, sat shotgun.

They were driving on a rural stretch of Poplar Grove Road in the Springville area between Big Sandy and Paris when their strange encounter began.

A bump in the night

Michelle said she was looking down when she felt the car hit some sort of big bump.

"It sounded like she hit an expensive pothole, so I asked her what it was," said Michelle. "She said, almost in tears, 'Mama, I hit a raccoon!'"

Michelle said Haylee, who loves animals and has a big heart, was upset at the thought that she might have killed a wild animal. So she reassured her daughter that these things happen, and that she should just keep a close watch while behind the wheel.

But about seven or eight miles down the road, they got the surprise of a lifetime when the raccoon crawled onto the hood of their moving car.

"At first, I thought maybe our cat had got under the car and rode with us to Clarksville and back," said Michelle. "But there was the raccoon climbing on the hood!"

Haylee started screaming, Michelle started rolling with laughter and getting video of their uninvited visitor, and Ronald woke up in confusion.

"My husband was trying to get Haylee to stop the car," said Michelle. "I've never seen him so confused."

Meanwhile, Haylee said she didn't know what to think.

"It was like instant fear. I felt like it looked into my soul like it knew what I had done," Haylee said. "I was happy I didn't kill it, but then I was like, 'Bless its heart!'"

Windblown but OK

The last they saw of their masked hitchhiker, he was jumping off the hood around Danville Road, looking windblown and leaving their car a bit worse for the wear.

"It did do a little damage to the car — a couple dents and scratches where it was holding on for dear life," said Michelle. "But then it just hopped off into the night."

"I guess it was a good week for raccoons. This one definitely had a will to live," said Michelle with a laugh.

Reach Jennifer Babich at 931-245-0742 or by email at jbabich@gannett.com. To support her work, consider signing up for a digital subscription at TheLeafChronicle.com.