Ahhhhh! This is amazing enough I would probably scream anyway but I’m contractually obligated to scream whenever a Raccoon comes up. They’re simultaneously so adorable and terrifying that screaming is the only action left in the center of their venn diagram.
BooksnPunches+9
This is wonderful! You almost even made me like those horrible little monsters, with their creepy almost-human hands and birdseed stealing ways.
eegghh+64
Family lore is my uncle had a pet a raccon named Sammy, who lived inside a broken washing machine in the basement. When my grandma would come down the stairs, he’d slowly lift the lid up, and his little beady eyes would shine out while he hissed his displeasure. I’ve always hoped to grow up to be more like sammy.
breakfastpumpkin+13
It’s like they had their own, personal Oscar the Grouch!
alicia+16
I love this so much. <3 <3 <3
I’m reminded of a blog post a few months back by a native Alaskan who was comparing how different the hunting she and her family did was to non-hunters perceptions of it. Her main point was that being a human with weapons and gear was not the advantage you might think, animals may not have our kind of mental faculties but they have evolved excellent skills in avoiding and/or tricking hunters (both human and animal). Also, you as a human may be the hunter of a caribou, but you could also be the hunted of a polar bear. Basically, the odds are at least even and if you haven’t grown up hunting your whole life well…
In closing, fuck yeah nature.
MilesofMountain+10
Such a good point. Until recently I worked in remote areas full of large wildlife, and even my big human brain and my gear, and my bearspray, and my feakin’ helicopter and men with guns just a radio-call away there have been so many times where my life or at least non-injured state depended on an animal deciding to let me be. There’s nothing like a day spent listening for snaps in the bush or weird smells and taking turns doing threat scans with the other members of your group to remind you that humans have not been top dog for very long at all.
betsymurgatroyd+3
This just reinforced all my rational and irrational hate for raccoons. Not when they lay waste to my garden and terrorize the pets in my neighborhood. I do not think they are cute; I think they are creepy looking.
Only exception is the giant dancing raccoon on the Youtubes.
rangiferina+26
this is SO, SO COOL. your art is incredible and I would love to see mooooore like this on the toast! oh man.
elizabethdebold+8
I’ve always loved raccoons, despite the stories of bunny-eating (and pulling the heads off of baby chicks, possibly just for fun– raccoons just don’t give a damn). I fawned over Rascal by Sterling North as a kid (different from the Japanese cartoon, I assume?) and devoured any Jean Craighead George novel with potential tales of taming baby raccoons I could get my hands on. Once my neighbor brought me into an abandoned barn to see a pile of blind, squeaky kits, and I worried for ages afterwards that the mother would smell us and abandon them. There is definitely something alluring about their particular combination of cheeky style and wild animal flair that is lacking in potentially similar animals such as skunks and opossums.
Anyway, awesome piece (and the illustrations are gorgeous). I blame you for sending me into a raccoon-media-viewing spiral and probably having nightmares.
stregastrigoi+11
I love your style. I love your handwriting. I love raccoons! When I lived in a tent in the woods near Waxahachie, TX, I accidentally left a pizza box outside on a rainy night. During the night I woke to weird scratching noises, and in the morning all the pizza inside was eaten, and all my outside things had little muddy handprints all over them. I immediately fell in love and named the culprit Mr. Hands. I didn’t leave food outside for it after that, but it still came by every night to root around outside. I never saw Mr. Hands, it could have been a Mrs but her name would’ve still been Mr Hands, you know?
SO uh, anyway, yeah, I love this!
EdgarAllanPoBoy+13
I watched Raccoon Nation a few months ago and it was so interesting! Researchers did GPS tracking on the urban raccoon and realized that these guys just hit the same block of houses over and over again because their only real predators were cars driving on busy streets.
kisseswithkirk+4
Yep! I can tell when they get to my house because of their poop cycle. My deck is poop free for a few days and then bam! Raccoon toilet time. Which is annoying as, well…shit.
HotDoom+33
Is this actually the “Classified” scoop on normal milestones between the ages of 18 mos and 3 years old? Are raccoons actually human toddlers on sabbatical? I knew they had to use those grabby little raccoon hands for something other than picking their noses. This explains a lot.
They also eat baby squirrels. Probably regular sized ones too. Those screams haunted my childhood. My dad built a squirrel house in our backyard and I guess it served as a one stop snack shop for the raccoons.
Now the squirrels have moved out and the raccoons made the hole big enough so that they can sleep in the little house with their head sticking out. It’s adorable!
Teka Lynn+1
And cats. Cats are VERY wary around raccoons, and with good reason. Raccoons can, and do, kill them.
GruntledDave+5
Our cat Fred is the sole survivor of a raccoon attack on a litter of kittens 🙁
Teka Lynn
Yeesh. Poor guy. : (
laurenipsum+2
And chickens. Our worst predator problems with our poultry have been raccoons. I hate those adorable fuckers.
elisbradshaw+1
Raccoons do not fuck around.
ajehly+2
I had this exact reaction and had to read it about 10 times to make sure.
I have a single raccoon paw print on the siding of my house just under the kitchen window that I don’t have the heard to wipe off. I hope he was peeking in and scaring the crap out of my cats.
Unreadaethel+22
Depending on the status of your trash bins, that paw print is either a warning, or a sign to let other raccoons know that your house is under his protection/he owns you.
laurenipsum+29
It’s a tale ringed with luck, wits, flexibility, and strong stomachs
I see what you did there
osutein+22
Fun fact: In Japan raccoons are called “Araiguma” which literally means, “Washing Bear.” Presumably from the legend about them washing their food.
tragicallyludicrous+6
In a lot of languages they get a “wash bear” translation! Well, at least German and Dutch. It’s adorable.
katenepveu+6
This was super. Thanks.
threatqualitypress+42
ONCE when driving home late at night on a two-lane road, I saw ahead of me and coming the other direction a car that had stopped, and behind it a line of cars, waiting impatiently. What did they see?
A raccoon, beside the side of the road, waiting for the cars to stop so she could cross. She ran in front of me after I stopped. And then!
A line of eight or more baby raccoons, running out in front of the headlights after their mother!
RACCOONS YOU GUYS
sednarea51+23
This is just delightful! The combination of lovely art and ANIMAL FACTS is so far up my alley it’s in my backyard. I hope we see more installments of your stuff here!
I watched a documentary about honey badgers earlier this week and there seems to be a lot of similarities between them and raccoons! Honey badgers are known for being absolutely fearless (they fight hyenas on the regular & will willingly go up against lions!) but they’re also tough, dexterous, agile little creatures. Mostly, though, they’re incredibly SMART. Most of the documentary was about a honey badger living in a wildlife refuge and the many ways he was able to escape his enclosure. There was also a segment about a beekeeper trying to design a honey badger-proof hive. The honey badgers outwitted all his designs.
bookwormV+4
It reminded me of honey badgers too! I saw that documentary (assuming it’s the same one) a few months ago and was so impressed. It dug up the ground in its enclosure to find stones, piled them against the wall and climbed out! Amazing.
elizabethdebold+5
I’ve always loved raccoons, despite the stories of bunny-eating (and pulling the heads off of baby chicks, possibly just for fun– raccoons just don’t give a damn). I fawned over Rascal by Sterling North as a kid (different from the Japanese cartoon, I assume?) and devoured any Jean Craighead George novel with potential tales of taming baby raccoons I could get my hands on. Once my neighbor brought me into an abandoned barn to see a pile of blind, squeaky kits, and I worried for ages afterwards that the mother would smell us and abandon them. There is definitely something alluring about their particular combination of cheeky style and wild animal flair that is lacking in potentially similar animals such as skunks and opossums.
heapy+22
When he was a child, my father once got a raccoon to follow a trail of Cheerios into his house and then slammed the door shut and (I imagine) shouted something like, “You’re my pet now!” The raccoon proceeded to freak the eff out and ruin the curtains until my grandma opened the door and the raccoon split. I’ve heard this story multiple times, and now I’ve read this lovely piece with its cautionary tale about Japan, and I don’t even care I will always and forever want a pet raccoon and YOU CAN’T STOP ME.
tragicallyludicrous+12
They have raccoons at the zoo in Rotterdam! They call them “wasbeer,” wash bear. My friend was very excited to see them at the zoo, which was just hilarious to me.
Glen H+5
Oooo, you are so lucky! We only have stuff like pandas,koalas and kangaroos in our zoos, nothing exciting like raccoons, squirrels or badgers! I so want to see a squirrel.
bookwormV+1
In Amsterdam too! I found them exciting.
tragicallyludicrous+3
I told her I once saw a raccoon on my college campus in the USA! And that it’s funny to think of them as a zoo exhibit rather than a nuisance/thing to watch out for. (Although I gather that the ones in Rotterdam are rescues from people who brought them to Europe as pets.)
Swim_Upstream+18
Maren! You are wonderful and perfect, and your biography is far too modest. I hope to see more of you on the Toast. 🙂
-Maren’s friend IRL (not a random creeper)
lauralizabethm+40
I worked at a pioneer village a few years ago, and one day we had to trap a raccoon that was living in one of the barns. We did this by leaving a trap open with a little dish and a piece of cake inside- the assumption being that the raccoon would go in to get the cake, and the door would shut behind it.
When we came back the next day, we found that the raccoon had reached in through the bars, dragged the cake to the edge of the cage, and eaten it without ever going inside. We did not find any “HAHA, SUCKERS” graffiti nearby, though I suspect we would have had our prey been literate.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH THIS IS SUPER AWESOME YOUR ART IS RAD EVERYTHING IS GREAT! MORE PLEASE!
dancingcrow+27
My wallet was stolen a couple years ago, out of our car when we were in a local state forest. We joked it was raccoons, and they were at that very moment using my credit cards to order child sized tools from Home Depot so they could build better things. Since they had my license too, there was speculation on how many raccoons it took to make my car go, and if they could figure out shifting. We decided they’d rather have a google self-driving car, so they could just type in where to take the party next.
The idea of raccoons as scapegoat kept going for years. We’d check the house for raccoons on returning from vacation, and make sure they weren’t using the internet to watch furry porn. It has turned into an elaborate set of stories and punch lines, but people’s real stories are so much better!
thinwireoflightning+2
Raccoons have broken into our fridge several times last summer. Everyone we talk to about it has heard similar stories. That being said, we don’t get a lot of raccoons in our neck of the woods. The local landowner is an old-fashioned farming type. Once summer ends he puts up traps and finishes off all the local raccoons with a shotgun. They don’t get much of a chance to figure us out.
msk+23
Raccoons have such a teenage attitude. I can recall finding several of them in the garage, investigating the trash cans, and being very nonchalant about leaving as I brandished a broom and made loud noises.
On a camping trip, the grown-ups thought that they could leave their coolers out because they had locks on them. During the night raccoons managed to open said coolers and lay waste to our campsite in less than three minutes.
And just this August, as the grown-up now on a camping trip, one sidled up casually to me as I was standing at our picnic table drying our dishes after dinner, just steps away from a roaring fire. My slow human brain did not quite register what was happening until it was practically standing on my foot. Our eyes met and the raccoon raised a paw, in a kind of halfhearted, disdainful way, as if defending itself was barely worth it. I gave a yelp and leaped away. Once again it took a lot of noise to make it and its even sneakier raccoon friend slowly saunter off.
All this to say, respect to the raccoons. They get down with their bad selves.
Unreadaethel+8
Honestly, they probably have a raccoon internet, and the news has spread among the raccoon population that humans find them adorable, and therefore pose relatively little threat.
RaccoonFox+2
Well, the city of Toronto decided to strike back and they’re building “real” raccoon-resistant bins. Watch the testing video and you can share your own raccoon story if you want. http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/the-intelligent-…
RuncibleSpoon+3
My very very large family dog, who delighted in squirrel chasing, took one look at the raccoon who’d taken up residence in the yard and backed off. That raccoon made off with a lot of dog food.
donkeywork+12
So beautiful! And you noted my favorite (and only recently learned) rac-fact, about their supersensistive paws. We used to leave a bowl of rice and a bowl of water on the deck by this wall of windows in our house, and then die laughing as they would come, eat a single grain, and wash and wash. Little did we know: Sensory delights beyond our frail imagining. More please, and yay again this was great.
littleowls+12
I love this I love them I want one (I knoooow I can’t, they are eerie-noisy, messy bastards even when you’re camping anyhow, but I heard about an old lady who had one as a pet and it used to jump down from the second-floor staircase in her home and scare guests, and I don’t *not* want to be that old lady)
Unreadaethel+4
I saw an albino raccoon climbing the neighbor’s drainpipe one day. Scared the crap out of me. Raccoons with white paws are astonishingly unsettling.
Hththe1st+21
I used to have a friend who lived in a woodsy area that was a hip, up-and-coming neighborhood for raccoons. Sometimes we would open the back door, and there would be a raccoon hanging there on the screen door. Just belly up to the screen and hanging by its claws, looking at us like, “Sup, ladies? I heard there was food in here.” You’d have to get a broom and poke his belly through the screen to get him to wander away.
I kinda miss that little asshole.
Toby+2
My Lab killed several fat ones separately a few years ago. Neighbor was upset as she enjoyed watching them on her deck.
laurenipsum+3
We had a run of really stupid raccoons for a while. I think it was young ones whose parents got killed when the littles were still a bit too little. Our dogs would tree the raccoon, and then it would start to come back down, into the gaping maws of the dogs. Like, what are you thinking, stupid raccoon?? Stay in the tree! But no.
I took my dog to the vet three times that summer for face wounds, and every time they did another rabies booster and more antibiotics. That was an expensive summer.
AmazingSandwich+3
Cuteness < disease vector. So many diseases. Loved the art + whole piece!
laylapalooza+13
I now want you to write and illustrate “Dirtbag Raccoons.”
jeanne+10
After my cat died, I had a partial bag of dry food left, maybe six or seven bowls’ worth. It was late winter, and I decided to put it out on my balcony for the birds or squirrels.
No one touched it for a few days; then one morning, not only was the food gone… the bowl was CLEAN. I thought, wow, someone’s hungry. I put out more – same thing next morning. This happened for a few more days.
One night, I got up to get a glass of water. I turned on the little light over my stove, got my glass, and turned around to see TWO LITTLE GLOWING EYES LOOKING AT ME THROUGH THE SLIDING GLASS DOOR. I’m not a screamer, but I was, naturally, shaken up. I slowly approached the door, whereupon the owner of the glowing eyes turned around and moved towards the balcony railing. I got to the door in time to see a sizeable striped rump and bushy tail disappearing over the side and out of sight. Did I mention that I live on the second floor, and that my balcony is TWENTY FEET ABOVE THE GROUND?? The raccoon had climbed up and down the drain pipe from the roof, the little mofo! Gold star for ingenuity!
EB
Raccoons do not fuck around.
theharpoon+2
wait was the documentary you guys saw actually the YouTube video entitled “The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger” because that thing is amazing
BCArmstrong
I have them in the attic right over my head; they're often fantastically busy sounding, as if they were doing a full-scale renovation of the space. When they have spats it sounds like a zombie apocalypse — but zombies on meth. As the fall progresses, I can hear that they're putting on weight; after several years of this I've almost gotten over the fear that the obese bastards might fall through my ceiling. My landlord just shrugs.
Bryn (Plus Others)+1
This was WONDERFUL. More, please!
carolynroccam+1
The “softened by water” forepaws goes a little way to explain the wonderful and plentiful mud prints i see coming from the Bay.
Amy
Please please more of these? Please? My family has had the same raccoon skulking around our backyard since forever–he's easily distinguished by his notched ear. He's probably around 20 years old (we've lived in the same location for 30 years and he wasn't too young when we first started seeing him) and is grizzled and grumpy as you please. He doesn't give an eff about my parent's cat–a huge tomcat that hisses and spits and raises cane whenever the grizzly comes into the yard. And he's freaking enormous. Kind of love him.
KaitB+3
We had a brutal drought in Texas a couple years ago and I had two cats. One of them let me know he had no intention of being the cuddly warm mop I brought him home to be. He intended to be a fierce outdoor night ruler and unreformed murderer of all things tiny and holy that screamed as he killed them in neighboring yards. Ugh. I wouldn’t see him for days and then he’d come strutting home with no collar, carrying five layers of dirt, looking extremely self satisfied. Many collars were bought. So I would leave food and water out for him at night. Eating it was sometimes the only acknowledgement he’d give that he owned a human.
Well the food started disappearing. The water bowl would be empty on the other side of the yard. And there’d be funny marks on everything. It took a week or two to realize I had a raccoon. A fat shy ravenous raccoon. I kept placing out tons of water but bringing in the cat food. Because of the drought, foxes were coming into subdivisions to drink out of people’s swimming pools. It would drink all the water. Occasionally I’d use the raccoon as a garbage disposal for takeout I’d left too long in the fridge or vegetables that had gone off. It was better than picking up trash it’d dump out of the cans. Much more efficient really.
After a while my raccoon wasn’t so evident, and then one night, it came in with a baby. A baby raccoon. My raccoon was a momma! Then there were two more! One bold baby, one shy baby, and one middle child who would steal from the shy one and fight with the bold one. Aghhh! I fell in love. They all got names. Momma was Goldie. And for some reason I suddenly had a lot more half eaten veggies or nearly bad potato soup I needed to get rid of.
Eventually they grew up but not before scaring the bejesus out of my outdoor night ruler cat on the regular. If they were on the other side of the screen door, he’d puff up, then get really tiny, then nearly piss himself, and finally hide for an hour, looking traumatized when he came out again. It was sad but hilarious. Fewer collars were lost to the wilds.
I read up on raccoons and realized I loved my handsy wee mischievous people but I didn’t want them to decide they owned me. If they chose to get in my house and tear it up for food because I was away for a few days I’d have no one to thank but myself. Or if one of the babies thought all humans were great. Ugh. Bad. So I never put food out directly in their sight. I randomized it and made it unpredictable. I made sure it was truly scraps, like what I’d really throw away. There frequently was no food for days, but there was always water. Eventually they all learned to dumpster dive like pros and didn’t peer at me with their little black eyes and sing songs of chitter chitter chatter anymore. I missed them. Goldie and her cat scaring progeny. I hope they’re turning over trashcans somewhere tonight.
ajehly+3
Police blotter entry from a local small newspaper that has been haunting me: “Resident called police to report that a raccoon had crawled into bed with him at 1:30 a.m., Sept. 9”
Ahhhhh! This is amazing enough I would probably scream anyway but I’m contractually obligated to scream whenever a Raccoon comes up. They’re simultaneously so adorable and terrifying that screaming is the only action left in the center of their venn diagram.
This is wonderful! You almost even made me like those horrible little monsters, with their creepy almost-human hands and birdseed stealing ways.
Family lore is my uncle had a pet a raccon named Sammy, who lived inside a broken washing machine in the basement. When my grandma would come down the stairs, he’d slowly lift the lid up, and his little beady eyes would shine out while he hissed his displeasure. I’ve always hoped to grow up to be more like sammy.
It’s like they had their own, personal Oscar the Grouch!
I love this so much. <3 <3 <3
I’m reminded of a blog post a few months back by a native Alaskan who was comparing how different the hunting she and her family did was to non-hunters perceptions of it. Her main point was that being a human with weapons and gear was not the advantage you might think, animals may not have our kind of mental faculties but they have evolved excellent skills in avoiding and/or tricking hunters (both human and animal). Also, you as a human may be the hunter of a caribou, but you could also be the hunted of a polar bear. Basically, the odds are at least even and if you haven’t grown up hunting your whole life well…
In closing, fuck yeah nature.
Such a good point. Until recently I worked in remote areas full of large wildlife, and even my big human brain and my gear, and my bearspray, and my feakin’ helicopter and men with guns just a radio-call away there have been so many times where my life or at least non-injured state depended on an animal deciding to let me be. There’s nothing like a day spent listening for snaps in the bush or weird smells and taking turns doing threat scans with the other members of your group to remind you that humans have not been top dog for very long at all.
This just reinforced all my rational and irrational hate for raccoons. Not when they lay waste to my garden and terrorize the pets in my neighborhood. I do not think they are cute; I think they are creepy looking.
Only exception is the giant dancing raccoon on the Youtubes.
this is SO, SO COOL. your art is incredible and I would love to see mooooore like this on the toast! oh man.
I’ve always loved raccoons, despite the stories of bunny-eating (and pulling the heads off of baby chicks, possibly just for fun– raccoons just don’t give a damn). I fawned over Rascal by Sterling North as a kid (different from the Japanese cartoon, I assume?) and devoured any Jean Craighead George novel with potential tales of taming baby raccoons I could get my hands on. Once my neighbor brought me into an abandoned barn to see a pile of blind, squeaky kits, and I worried for ages afterwards that the mother would smell us and abandon them. There is definitely something alluring about their particular combination of cheeky style and wild animal flair that is lacking in potentially similar animals such as skunks and opossums.
Anyway, awesome piece (and the illustrations are gorgeous). I blame you for sending me into a raccoon-media-viewing spiral and probably having nightmares.
I love your style. I love your handwriting. I love raccoons! When I lived in a tent in the woods near Waxahachie, TX, I accidentally left a pizza box outside on a rainy night. During the night I woke to weird scratching noises, and in the morning all the pizza inside was eaten, and all my outside things had little muddy handprints all over them. I immediately fell in love and named the culprit Mr. Hands. I didn’t leave food outside for it after that, but it still came by every night to root around outside. I never saw Mr. Hands, it could have been a Mrs but her name would’ve still been Mr Hands, you know?
SO uh, anyway, yeah, I love this!
I watched Raccoon Nation a few months ago and it was so interesting! Researchers did GPS tracking on the urban raccoon and realized that these guys just hit the same block of houses over and over again because their only real predators were cars driving on busy streets.
Yep! I can tell when they get to my house because of their poop cycle. My deck is poop free for a few days and then bam! Raccoon toilet time. Which is annoying as, well…shit.
Is this actually the “Classified” scoop on normal milestones between the ages of 18 mos and 3 years old? Are raccoons actually human toddlers on sabbatical? I knew they had to use those grabby little raccoon hands for something other than picking their noses. This explains a lot.
“Raccoons eating jealously guarded pet bunnies” – I’M SORRY, WHAT?? Holy shit.
They also eat baby squirrels. Probably regular sized ones too. Those screams haunted my childhood. My dad built a squirrel house in our backyard and I guess it served as a one stop snack shop for the raccoons.
Now the squirrels have moved out and the raccoons made the hole big enough so that they can sleep in the little house with their head sticking out. It’s adorable!
And cats. Cats are VERY wary around raccoons, and with good reason. Raccoons can, and do, kill them.
Our cat Fred is the sole survivor of a raccoon attack on a litter of kittens 🙁
Yeesh. Poor guy. : (
And chickens. Our worst predator problems with our poultry have been raccoons. I hate those adorable fuckers.
Raccoons do not fuck around.
I had this exact reaction and had to read it about 10 times to make sure.
Their little, nimble, probing hands… http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=492
I have a single raccoon paw print on the siding of my house just under the kitchen window that I don’t have the heard to wipe off. I hope he was peeking in and scaring the crap out of my cats.
Depending on the status of your trash bins, that paw print is either a warning, or a sign to let other raccoons know that your house is under his protection/he owns you.
It’s a tale ringed with luck, wits, flexibility, and strong stomachs
I see what you did there
Fun fact: In Japan raccoons are called “Araiguma” which literally means, “Washing Bear.” Presumably from the legend about them washing their food.
In a lot of languages they get a “wash bear” translation! Well, at least German and Dutch. It’s adorable.
This was super. Thanks.
ONCE when driving home late at night on a two-lane road, I saw ahead of me and coming the other direction a car that had stopped, and behind it a line of cars, waiting impatiently. What did they see?
A raccoon, beside the side of the road, waiting for the cars to stop so she could cross. She ran in front of me after I stopped. And then!
A line of eight or more baby raccoons, running out in front of the headlights after their mother!
RACCOONS YOU GUYS
This is just delightful! The combination of lovely art and ANIMAL FACTS is so far up my alley it’s in my backyard. I hope we see more installments of your stuff here!
I watched a documentary about honey badgers earlier this week and there seems to be a lot of similarities between them and raccoons! Honey badgers are known for being absolutely fearless (they fight hyenas on the regular & will willingly go up against lions!) but they’re also tough, dexterous, agile little creatures. Mostly, though, they’re incredibly SMART. Most of the documentary was about a honey badger living in a wildlife refuge and the many ways he was able to escape his enclosure. There was also a segment about a beekeeper trying to design a honey badger-proof hive. The honey badgers outwitted all his designs.
It reminded me of honey badgers too! I saw that documentary (assuming it’s the same one) a few months ago and was so impressed. It dug up the ground in its enclosure to find stones, piled them against the wall and climbed out! Amazing.
I’ve always loved raccoons, despite the stories of bunny-eating (and pulling the heads off of baby chicks, possibly just for fun– raccoons just don’t give a damn). I fawned over Rascal by Sterling North as a kid (different from the Japanese cartoon, I assume?) and devoured any Jean Craighead George novel with potential tales of taming baby raccoons I could get my hands on. Once my neighbor brought me into an abandoned barn to see a pile of blind, squeaky kits, and I worried for ages afterwards that the mother would smell us and abandon them. There is definitely something alluring about their particular combination of cheeky style and wild animal flair that is lacking in potentially similar animals such as skunks and opossums.
When he was a child, my father once got a raccoon to follow a trail of Cheerios into his house and then slammed the door shut and (I imagine) shouted something like, “You’re my pet now!” The raccoon proceeded to freak the eff out and ruin the curtains until my grandma opened the door and the raccoon split. I’ve heard this story multiple times, and now I’ve read this lovely piece with its cautionary tale about Japan, and I don’t even care I will always and forever want a pet raccoon and YOU CAN’T STOP ME.
They have raccoons at the zoo in Rotterdam! They call them “wasbeer,” wash bear. My friend was very excited to see them at the zoo, which was just hilarious to me.
Oooo, you are so lucky! We only have stuff like pandas,koalas and kangaroos in our zoos, nothing exciting like raccoons, squirrels or badgers! I so want to see a squirrel.
In Amsterdam too! I found them exciting.
I told her I once saw a raccoon on my college campus in the USA! And that it’s funny to think of them as a zoo exhibit rather than a nuisance/thing to watch out for. (Although I gather that the ones in Rotterdam are rescues from people who brought them to Europe as pets.)
Maren! You are wonderful and perfect, and your biography is far too modest. I hope to see more of you on the Toast. 🙂
-Maren’s friend IRL (not a random creeper)
I worked at a pioneer village a few years ago, and one day we had to trap a raccoon that was living in one of the barns. We did this by leaving a trap open with a little dish and a piece of cake inside- the assumption being that the raccoon would go in to get the cake, and the door would shut behind it.
When we came back the next day, we found that the raccoon had reached in through the bars, dragged the cake to the edge of the cage, and eaten it without ever going inside. We did not find any “HAHA, SUCKERS” graffiti nearby, though I suspect we would have had our prey been literate.
LAURAELIZABETH, WE PUT OUR MINDS TO IT AND TAUGHT OURSELVES ENGLISH
SO WE COULD WRITE YOU THIS GRAFFITI
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH THIS IS SUPER AWESOME YOUR ART IS RAD EVERYTHING IS GREAT! MORE PLEASE!
My wallet was stolen a couple years ago, out of our car when we were in a local state forest. We joked it was raccoons, and they were at that very moment using my credit cards to order child sized tools from Home Depot so they could build better things. Since they had my license too, there was speculation on how many raccoons it took to make my car go, and if they could figure out shifting. We decided they’d rather have a google self-driving car, so they could just type in where to take the party next.
The idea of raccoons as scapegoat kept going for years. We’d check the house for raccoons on returning from vacation, and make sure they weren’t using the internet to watch furry porn. It has turned into an elaborate set of stories and punch lines, but people’s real stories are so much better!
Raccoons have broken into our fridge several times last summer. Everyone we talk to about it has heard similar stories. That being said, we don’t get a lot of raccoons in our neck of the woods. The local landowner is an old-fashioned farming type. Once summer ends he puts up traps and finishes off all the local raccoons with a shotgun. They don’t get much of a chance to figure us out.
Raccoons have such a teenage attitude. I can recall finding several of them in the garage, investigating the trash cans, and being very nonchalant about leaving as I brandished a broom and made loud noises.
On a camping trip, the grown-ups thought that they could leave their coolers out because they had locks on them. During the night raccoons managed to open said coolers and lay waste to our campsite in less than three minutes.
And just this August, as the grown-up now on a camping trip, one sidled up casually to me as I was standing at our picnic table drying our dishes after dinner, just steps away from a roaring fire. My slow human brain did not quite register what was happening until it was practically standing on my foot. Our eyes met and the raccoon raised a paw, in a kind of halfhearted, disdainful way, as if defending itself was barely worth it. I gave a yelp and leaped away. Once again it took a lot of noise to make it and its even sneakier raccoon friend slowly saunter off.
All this to say, respect to the raccoons. They get down with their bad selves.
Honestly, they probably have a raccoon internet, and the news has spread among the raccoon population that humans find them adorable, and therefore pose relatively little threat.
Well, the city of Toronto decided to strike back and they’re building “real” raccoon-resistant bins. Watch the testing video and you can share your own raccoon story if you want. http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/the-intelligent-…
My very very large family dog, who delighted in squirrel chasing, took one look at the raccoon who’d taken up residence in the yard and backed off. That raccoon made off with a lot of dog food.
So beautiful! And you noted my favorite (and only recently learned) rac-fact, about their supersensistive paws. We used to leave a bowl of rice and a bowl of water on the deck by this wall of windows in our house, and then die laughing as they would come, eat a single grain, and wash and wash. Little did we know: Sensory delights beyond our frail imagining. More please, and yay again this was great.
I love this I love them I want one (I knoooow I can’t, they are eerie-noisy, messy bastards even when you’re camping anyhow, but I heard about an old lady who had one as a pet and it used to jump down from the second-floor staircase in her home and scare guests, and I don’t *not* want to be that old lady)
I saw an albino raccoon climbing the neighbor’s drainpipe one day. Scared the crap out of me. Raccoons with white paws are astonishingly unsettling.
I used to have a friend who lived in a woodsy area that was a hip, up-and-coming neighborhood for raccoons. Sometimes we would open the back door, and there would be a raccoon hanging there on the screen door. Just belly up to the screen and hanging by its claws, looking at us like, “Sup, ladies? I heard there was food in here.” You’d have to get a broom and poke his belly through the screen to get him to wander away.
I kinda miss that little asshole.
My Lab killed several fat ones separately a few years ago. Neighbor was upset as she enjoyed watching them on her deck.
We had a run of really stupid raccoons for a while. I think it was young ones whose parents got killed when the littles were still a bit too little. Our dogs would tree the raccoon, and then it would start to come back down, into the gaping maws of the dogs. Like, what are you thinking, stupid raccoon?? Stay in the tree! But no.
I took my dog to the vet three times that summer for face wounds, and every time they did another rabies booster and more antibiotics. That was an expensive summer.
Cuteness < disease vector. So many diseases. Loved the art + whole piece!
I now want you to write and illustrate “Dirtbag Raccoons.”
After my cat died, I had a partial bag of dry food left, maybe six or seven bowls’ worth. It was late winter, and I decided to put it out on my balcony for the birds or squirrels.
No one touched it for a few days; then one morning, not only was the food gone… the bowl was CLEAN. I thought, wow, someone’s hungry. I put out more – same thing next morning. This happened for a few more days.
One night, I got up to get a glass of water. I turned on the little light over my stove, got my glass, and turned around to see TWO LITTLE GLOWING EYES LOOKING AT ME THROUGH THE SLIDING GLASS DOOR. I’m not a screamer, but I was, naturally, shaken up. I slowly approached the door, whereupon the owner of the glowing eyes turned around and moved towards the balcony railing. I got to the door in time to see a sizeable striped rump and bushy tail disappearing over the side and out of sight. Did I mention that I live on the second floor, and that my balcony is TWENTY FEET ABOVE THE GROUND?? The raccoon had climbed up and down the drain pipe from the roof, the little mofo! Gold star for ingenuity!
Raccoons do not fuck around.
wait was the documentary you guys saw actually the YouTube video entitled “The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger” because that thing is amazing
I have them in the attic right over my head; they're often fantastically busy sounding, as if they were doing a full-scale renovation of the space. When they have spats it sounds like a zombie apocalypse — but zombies on meth. As the fall progresses, I can hear that they're putting on weight; after several years of this I've almost gotten over the fear that the obese bastards might fall through my ceiling. My landlord just shrugs.
This was WONDERFUL. More, please!
The “softened by water” forepaws goes a little way to explain the wonderful and plentiful mud prints i see coming from the Bay.
Please please more of these? Please? My family has had the same raccoon skulking around our backyard since forever–he's easily distinguished by his notched ear. He's probably around 20 years old (we've lived in the same location for 30 years and he wasn't too young when we first started seeing him) and is grizzled and grumpy as you please. He doesn't give an eff about my parent's cat–a huge tomcat that hisses and spits and raises cane whenever the grizzly comes into the yard. And he's freaking enormous. Kind of love him.
We had a brutal drought in Texas a couple years ago and I had two cats. One of them let me know he had no intention of being the cuddly warm mop I brought him home to be. He intended to be a fierce outdoor night ruler and unreformed murderer of all things tiny and holy that screamed as he killed them in neighboring yards. Ugh. I wouldn’t see him for days and then he’d come strutting home with no collar, carrying five layers of dirt, looking extremely self satisfied. Many collars were bought. So I would leave food and water out for him at night. Eating it was sometimes the only acknowledgement he’d give that he owned a human.
Well the food started disappearing. The water bowl would be empty on the other side of the yard. And there’d be funny marks on everything. It took a week or two to realize I had a raccoon. A fat shy ravenous raccoon. I kept placing out tons of water but bringing in the cat food. Because of the drought, foxes were coming into subdivisions to drink out of people’s swimming pools. It would drink all the water. Occasionally I’d use the raccoon as a garbage disposal for takeout I’d left too long in the fridge or vegetables that had gone off. It was better than picking up trash it’d dump out of the cans. Much more efficient really.
After a while my raccoon wasn’t so evident, and then one night, it came in with a baby. A baby raccoon. My raccoon was a momma! Then there were two more! One bold baby, one shy baby, and one middle child who would steal from the shy one and fight with the bold one. Aghhh! I fell in love. They all got names. Momma was Goldie. And for some reason I suddenly had a lot more half eaten veggies or nearly bad potato soup I needed to get rid of.
Eventually they grew up but not before scaring the bejesus out of my outdoor night ruler cat on the regular. If they were on the other side of the screen door, he’d puff up, then get really tiny, then nearly piss himself, and finally hide for an hour, looking traumatized when he came out again. It was sad but hilarious. Fewer collars were lost to the wilds.
I read up on raccoons and realized I loved my handsy wee mischievous people but I didn’t want them to decide they owned me. If they chose to get in my house and tear it up for food because I was away for a few days I’d have no one to thank but myself. Or if one of the babies thought all humans were great. Ugh. Bad. So I never put food out directly in their sight. I randomized it and made it unpredictable. I made sure it was truly scraps, like what I’d really throw away. There frequently was no food for days, but there was always water. Eventually they all learned to dumpster dive like pros and didn’t peer at me with their little black eyes and sing songs of chitter chitter chatter anymore. I missed them. Goldie and her cat scaring progeny. I hope they’re turning over trashcans somewhere tonight.
Police blotter entry from a local small newspaper that has been haunting me: “Resident called police to report that a raccoon had crawled into bed with him at 1:30 a.m., Sept. 9”
Unsure if that was really a thing that happens, I googled and found this: http://www.wcvb.com/news/local/boston-south/mista…
Now every night in bed I have to wonder ARE THOSE THE CATS OR BITEY BITEY RACCOONS.
And now YOU DO TOO. Sorry.