Too many people want you to dismiss a raccoon’s deal of “Oh they’re mischievous cat-dogs with friendly washed hands and a jewel-thief face” when it’s really an ALL-HANDS NO-FEET TRASH-CAT WITH A DOG’S STOMACH AND A POSSUM’S HEART.
It can put itself up in trees but it waddles on the ground, I can’t be in trustment of a beast that clambers and waddles both; either be graceful and lithe all of times, or be clumsy and relatable on the ground. Seals can barely pull off “limber in the water, silly on a rock” and raccoons, you are not seals, you do not have their wise old laugh-faces, you just seem creepy and duplicitous.
Once when my dog died a passel of raccoons showed up in the backyard as if to say “Now that he’s gone, we own the night,” and they didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it disrespectful to 1) me personally and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t disrespect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.
YOU SCRUBBLEMENT UP YOUR WITCH HANDS AND I DON’T TRUST IT, THAT IS A HUMAN ATTRIBUTE AND I WANT YOU TO LEAVE THAT TO US, STOP BEFORE-WASHING AND RUBBLE-SCRITCHING YOUR FUR-FINGERS, YOU MASHED-DOWN SMALLBEAR
They’re a dense badger lie
THEY CAN POINT THEIR FEET BACKWARDS TO CLIMB DOWN TREES, THEY CAN SWIM, THEY CAN SWEAT LIKE A YOU OR ME, A PERSON OR PANT LIKE A DOG TO COOL DOWN AS THEY CHOOSE, THEY IDLY AND INSOLENTLY SLIDE BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND THE HUMAN WORLD AND IF THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU TAUGHT ME NOTHING ELSE IT’S THAT THAT IS FUCKED UPWARDLY
I don’t like the word “chittering” and that is the only sound a raccoon makes
MAYBE THEY ARE AN ASSEMBLAGE OF VERY CONDENSED SQUIRRELS THAT POWERED UP INTO A MEDIUM-SIZED BEASTIE AND THAT WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE, IF SQUIRRELS HAD DEVELOPED POWER-RANGER-LIKE ABILITIES
I hate the way they wobble-squample across the street at night when you see a shadowy mass under a streetlight and then it turns out to be like seven fur-children
A raccoon is the child of a cat and a wizard and it walks in too many worlds for it to be allowed to stay in this one
STOP LOOKING AT ME, YOU RIVER-DABBLER
They’ve got representation on the Guardians of the Galaxy, as do trees. Gotta respect that.
You kind of made me like raccoons more.
Yeah, I get the impression that raccoons are too witches for Mallory. They are just witches enough for me, but I do have a soft spot for woodland creatures that hiss.
WE OWN THE NIGHT
-the raccoons
“We rent it out at surprisingly reasonable prices.”
I went to pet a fluffy mama raccoon right after I got stitches on my hand from a playground accident. I barely even touched her cage but I had to get half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide poured on the cut and my mom started yelling about rabies shots. They are dangerous and crafty little fuckers.
There is actually a CDC warning specifically about raccoon latrines because they can transmit Baylisascaris procyonis, “a roundworm that can be harmful to people.”
Raccoons are the WORST.
ETA: I know this because our neighbors feed the raccoons. And the squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats, bunnies, deer, and eventually probably the cougars that are going to show up to catch all this nice prey. Since our neighbors feed the raccoons, the raccoons choose to make their latrines in our yard. If you don’t know, raccoons come back to the same place to defecate over and over. IN OUR YARD. WHERE OUR CHILD PLAYS. And we can’t keep them away because our neighbors refuse to quit feeding them.
One option remains: set your neighbors’ house on fire. Burn it all down.
Believe me, if we could think of a way to get rid of these neighbors that was legal, we would do it.
Why limit yourself to legal? Secretive and undetectable are all you need to be.
Traps? Traps. My dad gets endless satisfaction from his squirrel traps.
You have to take those Dense Badger Lies 10 miles out of town or THEY COME BACK AGAIN
AND ALSO EAT YOUR CHICKENS
EVIL NIGHT-LORDS THEY
Also the chittering becomes an earsplitting bobcat growl-scream if, like, you just HAPPEN to catch one in a trap after it has slaughtered all of your chickens, and it just happens to have been a very stormy night, so said raccoon is just a wee bit miffed having been in a tiny cage during a thunderstorm all night.
(hee hee hee)
Pro tip: if you find yourself trying to pick up the flimsy little Hav-a-hart trap by the handle in such a situation? Don’t. Get a broom handle and keep the f*ck away from that sh*t.
They also get under rabbit hutches and chew off the rabbit’s toes, killing them by fright. I hate raccoons so very very much.
No.
Oh no no
Yes, all of this.
And. . . it is actually illegal where we live to relocate the little buggers.
Can you call your local animal control/county health department to come yell at these people/paper their home with fliers/remove the raccoons/dig up the latrines safely?
I mean, it sucks that you have to take control of the situation rather than your neighbors, but … Safety first.
Agreed. We have tried the fish & game and health departments, and all they say is, “Wow, that’s bad. They shouldn’t do that.” But apparently it is not actually illegal unless we can make a case that they are attracting cougars (or bears or other “habituated wildlife”). >:-(
Something is not right when your best option is “wait for cougars.”
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/32/72/7…
this is definitely something i would send to my partner as a romantic gesture, and if that doesn’t confirm my theory that my daemon is probably a raccoon i don’t know what would
MAYBE THEY ARE AN ASSEMBLAGE OF VERY CONDENSED SQUIRRELS THAT POWERED UP INTO A MEDIUM-SIZED BEASTIE AND THAT WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE, IF SQUIRRELS HAD DEVELOPED POWER-RANGER-LIKE ABILITIES
This is a perfect sentence. This is a beautiful piece of writing. I am shitting you not.
Imagining a sort of cross between a rat king and a Transformer.
[shivers]
That and “dense badger lie” really are quite perfect.
WE WERE NOT MEANT TO BE
Them and the cephalopods. Out to get you.
Came here to post this!
Everything about this is why I love raccoons! They’re the closest thing to American baboons, but they’re cuter and masked!
it’s true baboons put the horror of all other wildlife in perspective
Aw, but that’s a really lovely mandrill!
Though maybe it could do with a bit less caffeine.
Yes, plus they know how to make a mess! Without raccoons, would we have invented lock-top garbage cans? No!
Possums are equally good motivators in that particular area, though.
And less horrifyingly toothy.
Laughed out loud in my office, enough to draw attention from next door.
Then I thought of the raccoons slinking on to the screened in porch to steal cat food when I was growing up and my laughter died, how I would be pleasantly reading while the house was asleep, safe from mosquitoes and little brothers, and a raccoon would shamble in like it belonged there, barely sparing me a glance. I threw a paperback at one and it just stepped around the book on it’s way to the food bowl.
raccoons in the cat food. UGH. We installed a special magnet-operated cat door to curtail this activity, and those fuckers figured it out in under a week. THEY ARE CRAFTY DEVIL KIN
I am 100% certain that if we hadn’t turned out to be the branch that evolved into something sentient, raccoons would’ve done it.
ETA: I’m not ruling out the possibility that they still might.
There is a documentary from PBS called Raccoon Nation about how raccoons are getting smarter and bigger. I think it’s adorable and welcome our new raccoon overlords.
Raccoons give no fucks.
Parliament used to have some housing for stray cats, and there was a group of humans who faithfully showed up and fed (and also medicated) said cats, and if you went at night, you would totally see raccoons. Totally.
Once, when I was approximately 5 years old, I was at the beach with my family when I saw a family of raccoons peeking up through the rocks with their reflective eyes. We watched each other for about a minute before I turned to my dad and stage-whispered “RACCOONS, THE MOST TERRIFYING CREATURE ON EARTH”.
I stand by that statement.
I already loved raccoons but this has made me want to nominate them for the mascot of genderfluidness. Animals that wander back and forth between tree and ground or animal and disturbingly humanish or cute and vicious or pant and sweat or swim and wade . . . AND they have striped tails.
Raccoons are my people even more now.
Headcanon accepted.
Raccoons are called Waschbär in German and that makes them a perfect animal, afaik, will brook no dispute
Yes! Also “raton laveur” in French, which is probably closer to Mallory’s point but overall I’m disposed to love raccoons on etymological/linguistic grounds alone.
And aren’t they þvottabjörn “laundry bear” in Icelandic?
LAUNDRY BEAR OMG
You are Correct, yes.
Every German I have ever known has been enamoured of raccoons.
We call them araiguma in Japanese, which translates just the same way!
I once met a woman in Copenhagen at a Solstice party who had a little raccoon in a harness. When I asked if I could pet him, she very sternly said Do not touch my Waschbär – he bites and it was the best thing any one has ever said to me in all my life especially since I had no idea what Waschbär meant and just assumed it was some sort of mystical Scandinavian creature that looked exactly like raccoon. Edited to note: for years I thought this. It was before the Internet. Edited again: I was very inebriated as well, and a teenager.
Wasbeertjes 🙂
omg a wash bear that is so freaking cute stopppppp
Washing- Bears, I was gonna say that. The Nazis brought them over before the war so that could hunt them; they took over the place, so numerous their’s no way to get rid of them.
It’s also wash bear in Hungarian: mosómedve
Only the best and noblest creatures have possum hearts
I mean just look at this sweet garbage angel that lives in my neighborhood
SWEETIE
A darling friend!
Look at that nose, that nose could not belong to a creature who means harm.
OH WHAT A GOOD BABY
It is one of nature’s greatest mysteries how possums manage to look adorable exactly half the time and horrible/rabid/zombified for the other half.
YOU PEOPLE HATE MOTHS BUT THIS, THIS YOU LIKE?
Personally I am chill about moths but owls are demons and can gtfo
Owls are creatures of my heart: nocturnal, predatory, and wise as Athena.
Truth be told, it is raccoons who inspire loathing and disgust on a visceral level; I have never met an opossum, but I appreciate one for his bifurcated penis. I feel kinship with any being of unconventional sexuality.
I’m willing to entertain a little animal bigotry for humors sake but if I’m honest there aren’t many animals that I don’t enjoy at least 33% of the time.
Did you happen to have the Six Little Possums books as a child? I did and I can’t not love possums because of them. Their little faces!!!
When I moved back to Western NY as an adult, I hadn’t seen an opossum in ages. I was driving home at midnight and I saw the beady eyes in my headlights and thought, “dog? Cat? Raccoon? AUUUUGH WTF IS THAT GIANT RAT THING?!” But then I calmed down and now I love them very much because biodiversity and marsupial and funny cone face.
Also they eat a lot of Lyme-disease-bearing ticks, apparently!
I personally am on the record as an aficionado of all low and slow mammals (possums, woodchucks, skunks, and so on). Raccoons are a little too nimble and mean to make it fully into this category.
Skunks! Skunks and porcupines are locked in eternal competition for “The Trundle-iest of Animals.”
Oh man I completely forgot about porcupines (they don’t really live near me)! They are also great.
But skunks…skunks are the best, most relaxed animals, in the way that only the wielder of an olfactory superweapon can be. I love skunks.
I personally am on the record as an aficionado of all low and slow mammals
Yes! As a rather low and slow mammal, myself, I feel I have a bond with them.
MARMOTS 4EVER
My grandma was very fond of opossums, and used to say she wanted to be reincarnated as one. Now that she’s passed, I’m very careful to be nice to any opossum I meet, in case it’s Grandma.
I think this fondness came from the baby opossum that came into her home packaged inside her new oven. Her cat (male, and the terror of the neighborhood rats), adopted it and let it eat from his food bowl and taught it to use the cat flap. My grandparents were completely oblivious until they came home one day and found cat and possum peacefully eating side by side. They then found someone to trap the possum and relocate it to somewhere more conducive to a possum lifestyle than the middle of DC.
How … how long did they unknowingly have a pet opossum?
Every word of this comment is a delight, by the way.
At least a couple months, as I recall.
I am nowhere near any opossums, and probably never will be, but if I do meet any, I’m certain to be convinced it’s your gramma. I will be nice.
The house I grew up in had a very spooky basement. One day I was down there to take laundry out of the washer and a possum launched itself out of a pile of dirty sheets hissing and snarling at me. I thought my soul left my body for a moment and I ran up those stairs like the devil himself was chasing me.
We managed to trap her and remove her from the basement without harm. I could never go down there without checking all the piles of laundry with a gentle poke from a very long broom handle. Apparently, she really liked eating my Dad’s peaches off the tree.
Apparently, she really liked eating my Dad’s peaches off the tree.
the stuff of myth
This is some pretty fancy words for someone who claims to be protesting.
Are you sure you don’t want to be friends with a raccoon, Mallory?
mallory just happens to dream her fear in wordspurts
Raccoons have thumbs and are terrifying
but I also acknowledge if I could see my dæmon, he would probably be a raccoon so
*wobble-squamples away to rethink her life*
This is what a raccoon looks like without fur; once seen cannot be unseen. http://imgur.com/4uyKyPd
Aw, buddy! I want to knit it a sweater.
*shudders*
Why would I want to unsee that? Adorbs!
That photo won’t load and I can only assume that the universe is trying to protect me from this knowledge.
It left all its fur in a neat pile in front of it!
Is that another raccoon next to it, or is that its racoonly overcoat that it has shrugged off for the moment?
that is an unexpectedly huggable Michelin Man.
It’s like a squishy hyena! I might actually approve.
Oh gracious goodness…get the smelling salts out. I think I might pass out from the vapors.
Its BIG OLD EARS and CHUBBY TUM and WEE LITTLE FACE
It is actually very Piglet. Except it has very knowing eyes…kind of intimidating.
It would be fine without the comically shrunken head.
Sorry that I can’t post videos properly and I’ll admit this very tangentially related (which is how I tend to roll) but here’s a video of an orangutan washing his face with a cloth and him wringing it is the awesomest thing I’ve seen this week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUM2anIYf4I
I once went to the zoo when they were giving the orangutans some sort of treat. They gave each orangutan a Dixie cup, which they held up to the fence and then the staff person poured them each some sort of liquid. They’d daintily sip it all and then go back to the fence and hold it up for more. It was goddamn adorable.
They are so human-like. It makes me so sad when I think about how they are treated.
the real question is why we domesticated dogs instead
Domestication is a two way street. Raccoons are perpetually declining that invitation. We (people) don’t even go here.
But Pumpkin the Raccoon!
https://www.google.com/search?q=pumpkin+the+racco…
And Rascal, A Racoon to Remember!
I read that so many times in second grade that my library nearly had to replace the copy.
Dogs got there first.
Also they carry heavier loads, can walk almost as far as people, and taste better. By the time we met raccoons all of our pet needs were handled.
Last summer I was at the vet and in the waiting room there was a woman and her tiny dog who had been attacked by a raccoon in Big Sur. Lady and dog both were covered in bites and scratches, because of course when the raccoon attacked her dog she ran outside and attacked it in turn. She fought it off and then there were rabies shots all around. This lady and her dog both have earned their bravery merit badges, I tell you what.
(The dog was okay, they were there for a post-stitches followup.)
Wow, good for that lady. I’m serious – being brave in defense of companion animals is always something that warms my heart.
You have a typo in the headline. This is clearly, everything that’s right of raccoons
I spent a VERY long time contemplating whether that was a folksy turn of phrase or an error. I’m still not sure what I think.
I already loved raccoons but this has made me want to nominate them for the mascot of genderfluidness. Animals that wander back and forth between tree and ground or animal and disturbingly humanish or cute and vicious or pant and sweat or swim and wade . . . AND they have striped tails.
Cosign heartily.
This, so much. They are insolent, creepy, shambly things and they can try to re-brand themselves as “trash pandas” all they want, but I am not fooled.
Also pandas are really dumb, that is not a sell.
Dumb would be a major improvement for raccoons. They are too smart for such immoral creatures.
In a lot of ways I actually appreciate insolence, especially when it’s other animals towards humans. It’s a reminder that we haven’t yet broken this planets will.
This is why I like geese so much.
I think “They’re a dense badger lie” says it all, really.
I’ve had the shit scared out of me by one of these bastards one too many times for me to remain in the “awww cutie pie” camp.
From beneath, they devour
This is a pretty brave piece Mallory. Whatever sentiments I may hold about raccoons I would certainly never publish them, because they’re probably going to be the ones running things when we’re finished making the world uninhabitable for anything bigger than a breadbox and I wouldn’t put it past them to learn to read.
I maintain that the only way community compost programs make sense is raccoon psychic manipulation. We’ve gotta stay on their good side.
They’re a dense badger lie LOVE THIS SO TRUE
Growing up, we had a vacant lot/field behind my house that was host to a small raccoon family. The same year they appeared was the year my dad attempted to grow sweet corn in the backyard garden. He went out one July morning and the raccoons had picked all the corn, shucked it, and left him tidy, discrete piles of silk, husks and bare cobs on top of the picnic table. An unambiguous “thanks for the snack, sucker!”
I read in a Highlights for Children story that putting fresh newspaper out around the corn stalks kept raccoons from eating it. The child was told that it had to be fresh every day so that the raccoons would be busy reading and run out of time to steal corn; when he lazily didn’t replace it, the corn was stolen.
We were supposed to learn that the paper didn’t work because it was dampened by the prior night’s dew, and hence wouldn’t rustle to scare the raccoons away, but upon reflection it seems far more likely that raccoons can read than that they’d be scared by a little rustle.
Anyway, I tried it, and it worked!
Okay, I am here to bear testimony against the false-night-dogs:
I have a pond in my backyard with goldfish, and hey, nature works out so that sometimes somebody eats somebody else. I have no problem with that. My pond is deep, and smart goldfish figure out to go to the depths where they can’t be caught.
I do have ALL KINDS of problems with the raccoon who figured out that if he moved the external hose to the pond pump so that it was flowing into the garden instead of back into the pond — IT COULD DRAIN THE POND DOWN ENOUGH THAT IT COULD JUMP IN AND SLAUGHTER ALL THE FISH AT LEISURE.
You have to figure it was waiting around maybe fifteen twenty minutes for the water to become shallow enough. Legally, that’s called malice aforethought.
This comment is absolutely delightful. I read it out loud to my entire family and they shuddered in unison just thinking of the raccoon standing. Waiting. Anticipating.
If the fake trash night pandas must scrub at their faces with their creepy scaled down human hands and generally act like they want to steal a human skin and wear it like a coat then we should prosecute them in our human courts!
That is octopus level intelligence!!
And is to be praised. I can barely get my dog to sit.
Happily, it seems to be a limited superpower… While that particular raccoon has been gathered to the bosom of Abraham, current raccoons seem (from pawprint evidence) only interested in jumping up and down on my patio furniture.
Same thing happened with my friends koi pond! I was both impressed and horrified with their furry skills.
MURPHY IS DEAD??!!? Say it isn’t so!
I too am incredibly concerned about this. Fervently hoping that this is some previous dog who lived to be one million years old and then died peacefully by being borne off to dog heaven on a palanquin.
I did not even consider this horrifying possibility. I just assumed she was referring to some past dog whose pictures have never graced my screen. I HOPE MURPHY IS OKAY D:
Honestly that is how all dogs should die. At least we do know that all dogs go to heaven. I am part of a beagle FB group and we have agreed that a major part of dog heaven is an all you can eat buffet.
Mallory we cannot rest or eat until we find out if Murphy is okay.
No no, this was my childhood dog!
Whew. RIP childhood dog and may Murphy live for eternity.
Yay! Murphy endures!
I’m in Toronto. Raccoon are the city’s official rulers. All other animals live in fear and obey them. The humans recognize that our only purpose is to generate food and homes for them, via elaborate garbage systems.
Sample quote from our beleaguered mayor last week: “I told the raccoons that this day would come,” said Tory. “Raccoons literally sit on people’s porches waiting around for the chance to have a buffet.”
It is our reality.
WOW. My spouse and I once watched a raccoon spend like 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get into our trash can and finally give up in dismay, so obviously up in Toronto you are dealing with a more advanced species. [It was so hilarious…]
..are you sure you don’t actually live in Pawnee, Indiana?
(first in friendship, fourth in obesity!)
Parks & Rec writers came to us for the raccoon bits.
So Toronto is actually Pawnee, Indiana?
Nah, Pawnee has less of a problem. They’ve negotiated a truce!
Hello neighbour. How long do you give the beasts before they figure out these new bins? One month, tops, is my bet.
A terrifying experience: taking out garbage in the dark, opening a bin, and a raccoon jumps out (has happened several times to me).
Three or four weeks sounds about right.
Should have banked on one week.
That tracks, given that the only thing I know about Toronto in relationship to raccoons is this:
http://time.com/3952504/toronto-canada-dead-racco…
Two million people joined together in mourning.
Dead Raccoon for mayor! IKEA monkey for Deputy Mayor!
Thanks for putting this Toronto Trash Panda t-shirt in context for me!
http://www.blogto.com/sports_play/2016/04/toronto…
If we get an NFL team, they’re going to be the Trash Pandas.
Oh my god, I worked on a show in Toronto last year, and the venue was a tent, so the warmup/green room space was outdoors. One day all of upper management got a panicky email from the stage manager that two raccoons had inhabited the warmup area and wouldn’t leave. Most of the cast was foreign and had never encountered raccoons before, so they were trying to make friends. All of us were like “NO NO NO,” scared the raccoons off with loud noises and lights, and instituted very strict clean-up-after-yourself policies. The raccoons occasionally returned, but usually just passing through.
Once in my lovely house that had a loft bed and held many people for parties of various flavours, a family of raccoons took up residence underneath my deck, to tend to their ill-begotten mewling dirt-cubs. My beloved boxes of herb gardens, even those of flowers, were eaten asunder by those omnivorous despots, and truly they did come into my house and consume my cat’s food with nary a concern for the privacy and property rentership of my cat and myself.
So I called the authorities, a mighty feat for one such as I with great telephone-antipathy. And I was instructed to welcome the furry evil, for they lived in this land before you and I, and there were actual laws against hurting them. And then she suggested – the crone on the other end of the line gave a husky chuckle – that I might attempt to convince them to leave of their own accord by making the scent in the air distasteful to them. What, I wondered would they not like the smell of? “Urine” came the answer.
Yes, a city official advised me “invite an old man over to pee on your deck – older men have more ammonia in their pee, and that’s what the raccoons don’t like to smell.”
Not once did she consider what I might like to smell.
I aspire to be a bureaucratic crone.
Life goals:
-eclipse road trip
-bureaucracy crone-age
Like eclipse the psy-trance festival? Because if so your aspirations are similar to my actual life.
I took this to mean a road trip to the actual moon.
i figured it meant a tour of all the places mentioned in the twilight saga book 3
I had thought that it was a fairly obvious concept. If a slightly boring one. Yours all sound much more interesting, though outside of my comfort zone.
But what I meant was a road trip which includes a stop in a nice, lonely, clear-skied place that coincides with a total solar eclipse at that place. Like eastern Oregon next spring.
But…. DID YOU?????? Find one, and invite him over? And if so: can you share your script?
My network of both friends and foe at the time were of an age to while away the hours of night with glorious indulgence until dawn broke over the skyline of the city and then perchance we would slumber, or, if choosing not to, partake of further stimulants.
So I didn’t know any old people. I tried an ammonia based cleanser but those fuckers had more stamina than I. (Edit: see raqueue’s post above. I’m in Toronto too. The raccoons here are hardier than any other creature known to man.)
A TORONTO CITY OFFICIAL TOLD YOU TO FIND AN OLD MAN TO PEE ON YOUR PORCH?
Actually, no, not surprising at all.
Look, do you want herbs or do you want your deck not to smell like pee? You can’t have everything!
A+ story would read again
I am crying. This is terrifyingly amazing.
I don’t know – the smell of Old Man Pee might be preferable to the smell of Raccoon Triumph?
I beg to differ on one point: chittering is not the only noise they make. As I’ve learned from the raccoons in my neighborhood, they can also shriek like uncanny little banshees. At three in the morning. Usually, I think, while fighting with feral cats.
we once had a raccoon/skunk fight under our bedroom window, which (predictably, in hindsight) ended badly for all participants and unwitting observers.
This is what I came here to say.
My residence in university had some trees and a creek behind it and a parking lot after the trees. While it was nice to lounge on the grass under willows and birches by the water while studying, this also made ideal habitat for critters.
So it was not nice trying to sleep while the raccoons banshee shrieked at 3 am while either fighting or mating or both. You’d look out the window in horror, sure something was being murdered, only to see a foreboding roundish LUMP high in the branches of the tree.
(Also, WTF Chrome spellcheck, raccoon is ok but raccoons is not a word?)
I got the same stupid Chrome error. Look, Chrome, I checked, and the plural of raccoon is not “raccoon’s,” no matter how many people do not seem to understand the use of the apostrophe-s.
I’m beginning to think the feral cat party in my alley last night might have been multi-species.
Some of those shrieks are family squabbles, I’m pretty sure.
And raccoon mamas also croon very prettily to their little ones, who also croon back adorably. Little devils!
They also on occasion BARK. Loudly. And not like little Chihuahua yips, either, we’re talking the sound of at least a medium sized canine. Terrifying.
They also growl, loud AF….I learned this after accidentally catching one in a humane trap while caring for a feral cat colony. I had to get reeeeeeeally close in order to release it. I was pretty leery…..those teeth…..that glare…..those claws…..that growl….. we both emerged unscathed. Is it bad that I still love them more than most of my own family members?
In Cricket, many years ago, there was an article about a woman who did raccoon baby rehab. She raised them and taught them to fish and eat tubers and so forth.
Early in the program one of her raccoons showed up with a lot of babies and the woman was like “Aww”. The mother raccoon was like “Yes good, appreciate them, great.” And vanished into the brush alone. The woman was like “I have broken a raccoon and will raise generations of broken raccoons, I have failed as a wildlife rehabilitator, etc. etc.” and spent a very anxious afternoon emergency caring for baby raccoons and making phone calls.
Three hours later the mom showed up all “Did you kids have fun at grandma’s?” And that is how they discovered that raccoon females share child care.
Haha, this is amazing!
I did backup research on this because I was an ecology grad student citing a children’s magazine. Mothers and sisters share kit rearing and territory. Males live in groups of 2-5, all unrelated, all similar ages. There are spots designated by raccoons to meet for mating, and the males visit those together because female raccoons will not mate if all of their sisters, daughters and mothers don’t have a mate.
It is unknown if male raccoons neg.
that is magnificent.
OK now I want to adopt a female raccoon as my sigil. Gotta work out whether I’ve earned it, though.
So the official collective term should be a sisterhood of raccoons, is what I’m hearing.
This is the best thing I’ve read in years.
CRICKET!
This is heartwarming!
Full disclosure: I was sleeping during the below story, but this is how it was told to me.
My roommates (not my current “roommates”, if you’ve been keeping track, some different dudes) heard thumping on the roof during the small hours of the morning, so they pause their video games and listen more closely. They are sure it is a human walking up there, so they each grab [a wooden sparring sword, idk what they’re called] and run out there to be men and defend the house.
Of course it is a raccoon, a pretty big one, who had meanwhile gotten down to the ground. As they approach it, it stands up on its hind legs (“it was like 5 feet tall!!”) and saunters toward them in a sinister fashion.
My friends run back inside the house, (*slam, lock, lock, lock*) thoroughly cowed and creeped out.
“I mean, we ran out there ready to take on a team of Hulk Hogan ninjas and there was this MONSTER.”
Moral of the story is, don’t run around with fake samurai swords (or real ones I guess) unless you are truly prepared to use them.
Animals People Think are Cute but Are Actually Plotting for a Post-Human Earth
1. Chipmunks
2. Robins
3. Raccoons
4. Deer
5. Koalas
6. Sea Lions
I feel like they can be cute *and* evil though. Stuff can be two things!
This is not an either/or sort of a thing. Like my sister. Cute, but also plotting for world domination.
7. Squirrels
I think koalas don’t have the intelligence to Plot for a Post-Human Earth, but also I find them abjectly disgusting, so. Glad to find another anti-koala type, if you complain about the koala’s reputation as a cuddly-beast-worthy-of-adoration, people tend to look at you sideways.
Well, they *are* ridden with chlamydia, so
Octopi
Thank you for putting chipmunks at the top of the list. I thought I had pterodactyls screaming in my backyard, but it was tiny little chipmunks making all that racket. And those little boogers could climb up brick walls.
I had chipmunks who made their way into my house somehow. How do I know the chipmunks were there? Well, one day I came home and realized my cat had left me a present of one and a half dead chipmunks.
One AND A HALF.
They can try to take over, but Little Joe will take their asses down.
SEA LIONS are the woooorst, they *eat dogs*, stay far far away
WHAT. They EAT DOGS!??!
DOLPHINS
What the hell happened to that raccoon?!
Oh, this was meant to be in response to John with the picture of the hairless raccoon. 🙁
Is this where I tell the story about how an enterprising raccoon attempted to open a bordello above my bedroom? And then it died there while I was away at college?
Just say no to raccoons.
Yes. I believe this may be the place.
yeah i’ve had roommates like that, shit’s a hassle
Your crawl space became a designated meeting-for-mating area! Those are a real thing for raccoons – though it’s more like a singles bar than a bordello.
there is a trend i have noticed recently that is hipster men of OkCupid!New York having their profile pics taken with domestic raccoons so there’s one more thing to add to the list
How can you not love raccoons after watching this?
A gentle old man dancing with his tubby raccoon is probably the most perfect symbol for the kind of life I’d like to live.
easily. i mean the thing tries to eat the man’s leg towards the end
This raccoon clearly hates dancing and the man is torturing the raccoon by dancing near it; doing his small part to claim vengeance for our species.
“You’re a dense badger lie” is now my favorite insult.
Waiting, with bated breath, for my opportunity to say to someone, “I’m too witches for you, you dense badger lie.”
Edited to add that, upon consideration, if my goal is to use this phrase, I should go back to online dating.
THE COON SUIT THOUGH
Here’s the source, my b
Do you want rabies? THIS IS HOW YOU GET RABIES.
(I don’t know anything about the likelihood of a raccoon carrying rabies I just wanted to modify an Archer quote)
True though. I hope she burned her clothes and boots after this.
Fair-to-good, is the likelihood.
Pretty decent likelihood, but that’s true of any wild creature that is (obviously) unvaccinated and possibly being bitten by other animals. Seriously, don’t mess with wild animals, guys.
Nope nope nope
WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF
LIFE GOAL
‘In the history of bad ideas, this one’s a humdinger.’
Raccoons in the country? Fine. Enormous, fearless urban raccoons who just blithely pop up on their hind legs to open your screen door in the middle of the afternoon and saunter in like they own the damn place and then your grandmother doesn’t believe you when you say a giant $#^ing raccoon just let itself in the house so it’s just you and the racoon and you’re nine years old? TERRIFYING BEYOND MEASURE.
I live in the country and I must BEG TO DIFFER. Country raccoons are also huge and fearless and they will spread your garbage across three counties, they will scare your horses and your cattle, they will attack your good dogs. They will antagonize skunks in your barn and they will eat your barn kittens. They will kill every one of your chickens for sport, and they will chase your children. Raccoons belong nowhere.
All that said, I agree that a raccoon is not a good companion for a nine year old. In any locale.
And suburban raccoons are the apex predator of your backyard. They’re climbing in your attics, snatching your dog food up, they’re breeding everywhere out here. No population density is safe.
Somewhere between “Mighty Boosh” and e.e. Cummings, is this. It squamples toward greatness.
So, working at a petstore, a woman brings in a shoebox that is LITERALLY (literally literally) SCREAMING: and I’m like “uhhhh” and she’s like “here, this is for you” and I’m like “uhhh” and she’s like “it fell out of my chimney!” and I’m like “jfc I’m 17 and making minimum wage I do not get paid enough for screaming shoeboxes” and she’s like “what is it?” and then some other lady comes in and says “oh am I interrupting something?” NOPE JUST A SCREAMING SHOEBOX. So we open the shoebox and it is the tiniest baby raccoon just screaming and kind of rolling around and to this day I’m not sure if it was injured or just too baby and super pissed.
So I say “well that’s a baby raccoon” and the woman who brought it in asks “so, do you want it?” oh yes let me just plop this baby raccoon into a fishtank and slap a price sticker on it what a good and legal idea! So I tell her she needs to call a wildlife rehabber and she tries forcing the shoebox into my hands while saying “I’ll just leave this here and you can call whoever you know” NO ONE, I KNOW NO ONE (shoebox is still screaming).
By a magnificent stroke of luck the woman who thought she was interrupting something (I wish I’d asked what she thought was happening) worked in animal rehab and just wanted some crickets for some critters she had so SHE took the screaming shoebox of raccoon and I gave her all the crickets for free.
Also one time I was walking home with my bff and a family of three raccoons crawled down from a tree, crossed the street, stopped and looked at the redbox for a minute and then scampered behind the 7-11 dumpster
There is nothing like working in a store even remotely related to animals for horror stories. I never had that but one time a woman called me (at a bird-feeding store) to tell me she’d found a baby sparrow on the ground outside a nearby cafe, which she then delivered to us. It actually turned out okay – my coworker and I fed it baby food and water through an eyedropper all day (it was Mother’s Day) and left it snuggled up to a stuffed-animal sparrow. When we brought it back to the area at the end of the day and backed off, in about five minutes of furious cheeping, a female sparrow separated itself from the group and swooped down to furiously mother it. It was the coolest thing ever.
Not as weird as a screaming shoebox, I will give you that.
It’s the truth though! A man once came in, put a chicken chick on the counter and asked “can I trade this for a 20 gallon fishtank?” We did not sell anything chicken related. Nor did we barter.
Jesus GOD that is terrifying.
the screaming shoebox or the raccoons smart enough to decide not to rent from the redbox?!?!
i feel like if LMM ever read this he would turn it into a musical?
God, I can only hope
(and that he would cast me as “screaming raccoon shoebox”
Screaming shoebox. I love this story.
This story is going to keep me smiling for the rest of the workday. My coworkers will think me deranged. Nope, just laughing about screaming shoeboxes.
this is the kind of prank that belongs in history books
(shoebox is still screaming)
This is the greatest parenthetical there has ever been.
Raccoon stories:
1. We had a thoroughly awful winter in my neck of the woods a couple of years back, and when the thaw started, it became clear very, very quickly just how much wildlife hadn’t made it through to spring, so when we saw a wobbly, confused raccoon in broad daylight in the front yard, MrChouffe put some cat food in a little yogurt pot and placed it in an accessible place so the poor scrawny thing could get some calories. We quietly watched for a little while, as the raccoon sniffed at the dish of food, until it stood up and grabbed the dish in its front paws and RAN AWAY WITH IT.
2. When we were on our honeymoon last fall, we discovered a family of raccoons under the docks in Monterey. They’d come out at dusk and sit on a rock and eat the little clams attached to the rock. We were in Monterey for ten days, and we saw them on probably five separate occasions, and I swear there was one additional raccoon every time. What started as Mom and two babies was, by the end, three or four adults and at least five tiny babies and oh my HEAVENS they were the cutest damn things, with their clever hands and munchings.
I don’t know if this is because I grew up in the Southeast US or what, but I see a wobbly confused nocturnal animal in the daylight and think, “Yup, rabies.”
Not alone. Midwestern girl me thought that story was gonna end with a shotgun or a visit to the hospital.
The first raccoon sounds like it may have been rabid. At least wobbly, confused, and normally nocturnal but out in broad daylight can all be possible signs of rabies.
Or it could have just been using blatant raccoon trickery. Who knows.
Having had a wobbly, confused raccoon stumble around my yard, and having thus called the local humane society (which doubles as animal control), I was extremely pleased to discover that it was likely the result of the thunderstorm we’d just had and wasn’t rabies.
no really, this was not just an excuse for them not to come out there. As they’re nocturnal, they do NOT deal well if they are woken up in the daytime, and loud noises, such as daytime thunderstorms, will wake them, and then they basically behave like humans who’ve taken ambien and then stayed up. They’re sleep-drunk, basically. So, if there were loud noises happening, it wasn’t rabies. If it was quiet, though…
This whole article is a lie. Raccoons are amazing creatures full of fluff and delight.
You might see a pile of baby raccoons and think, how cute, but if you’re me, you think about the time your 3-year-old little brother willingly entered a cage full of baby raccoons at a nature preserve, and how they swarmed over him, and how his little cries for help were muffled through his closed lips, which were closed because the baby raccoons were trying to put their hands in his mouth.
that’s straight out of a horror movie
STOP BEFORE-WASHING AND RUBBLE-SCRITCHING YOUR FUR-FINGERS, YOU MASHED-DOWN SMALLBEAR
This – the grand, long-awaited follow up to the brilliant “The sky needs to calm down of birds” – is everything I hoped it would be.
This. What an absolute masterpiece of prose–it’s like Beowulf, only better.
I like racoons but I like your writing even more.
My shapeshifting cat sometimes takes the form of a raccoon and it is the most menacing thing she does.
Shapeshifting pants, not cat but I once woke up in the middle of the night and thought a pile of pants was my cat, so then when the cat jumped on the bed my mind immediately deduced that the pile of pants was a raccoon out to eat our cat food
I KNOW. I knowwww. Back when I lived in Wisconsin, when it got *really* dark out at night, I was sitting in my car outside my then-boyfriend’s house at maybe 3 AM, when everything was freezing and miserable, and my headlights were on and facing a storm drain. Then I saw what appeared to be a black ooze bubbling out from the drain, or maybe a cloud, but in any case, it was behaving like a fluid, not a solid. I only realized it was raccoons because of the little points of light embedded in it. Shifty liquid trashbastards.
My old neighborhood had a crew of raccoons we used to call “the Gang of Four,” and they’d ooze out of the storm drain, one by one, then assemble, four abreast, and march down the sidewalk like a shock troop. It was amazing and terrifying to behold.
“Did I ever tell you about my raccoon scar?” is one of my favorite lines to use on mates/friends when we’re in the later getting-to-know-you phase. My aunt was raising a little of abandoned raccoons and I was playing with the blind one who thought my leg was a tree. He dug in with his clawed people-paws and left me a memento. I love them anyway.
Here are some very urban raccoons politely waiting to board a San Francisco city bus.
!!!
THERE IS A PERSON STANDING JUST INSIDE THE DOOR DUDE WHY HAVE YOU LEFT IT OPEN
He hasn’t seen enough movies?
I am raccoon-ambivalent, but I was incredibly charmed by the single, perfectly formed pawprint one left on the siding of my house just beneath my kitchen window. I left it there until the rain washed it away.
We have a raccoon in the tree next to our house, so I am acquainted with their ways. But I maintain that the false night dogs are the foxes. Every summer we are treated to live renditions of What Does The Fox Say between 11pm and 3am.
Back in 1991? I think? I was in Denmark for three weeks. My first morning in Birkerod, a fox ran across the yard of the house where I was staying. I lost my mind, because foxes were not common at that time in Texas. The people I was staying with were all, “Yeah, foxes, sun gets up at nine and goes to bed at four, it’s winter, we get foxes in the back yard.”
That, combined with meeting some stout, phlegmatic, and very furry Danish horses, made me love Denmark in a way that I have not loved anything since.
The fox says [horrible demon shriek].
We once had a family of raccoons that were gleefully murdering all of the poultry. So I shot the dad. And then I shot the mom. The poor little half-educated kids were so *bad* at being raccoons. One memorable night the dogs chased a raccoon up the tree. This is all well and good, but the misbegotten creature decided it would be a great idea to climb back down the tree!. That was… very much an experience.
The was also a memorable night when our rooster, Yagarek, chased a raccoon out of the chicken coop. Now, as many of you know, chickens basically turn off in the dark. But this rooster woke up, took on a raccoon, chased him across the yard in the pouring rain and *won*. He ended up covered with blood and none of it was his.
Good rooster.
That is one fierce rooster!
“chickens basically turn off in the dark.”
Tell me more.
It’s more or less true. They are pretty much completely diurnal. Once they’re asleep, they’re hard to rouse… well, hens, anyway. It’s a myth that roosters only crow at dawn… the fuckers will crow whenever they damn well feel like, including at 3am if something wakes them up.
Yeah the easy/painless way to catch poultry is to wait until they roost at night. You can go up and grab ’em and they’ll barely say a thing.
This is very effective until the turkeys start roosting in the rafters and then half your Thanksgiving harvest is unattainable.
Dad raccoons have nothing to do with kits, you probably shot sisters.
Don’t know why i care about raccoon misgendering.
Oh great, I just murdered a nice lesbian raccoon couple who were co-parenting…
> Don’t disrespect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.
DON’T. TEST. THEM.
I don’t mind raccoons. I’ve never been chased by a raccoon. Squirrels…I’ve been chased by squirrels.
I’ve been chased by both.
I have been chased by an angry raccoon that thought I was in competition with it for the enormous pile of garbage it had just managed to get via knocking over a fucking full size garbage big. It screamed at me, which scared the crap out of my, so I screamed back. Then that bastard monster reared up on his hind legs, claws flared, and leapt at me. Like any sensible person, I ran the fuck away while that little shit chased me. Fuck raccoons.
My college squirrels would stare at you until you fed them. There’s video of one climbing up on a table while a student wasn’t paying attention, crawling into her backpack, and stealing her lunch.
A school squirrel once lept onto my shoulder and attempted to steal a chocolate from my very hands. In addition, and I swear this to god, it had red teeth.
My neighborhood park is littered with signs warning against the consumption of food therein because squirrel attacks are so common. THEY CLIMB INTO STROLLERS TO THIEVE FROM INFANTS. Yes, I do think those caps were appropriate.
Squirrels are hardcore, man.
A million years ago, when my penultimate husband and I went to Seattle to house-sit for my parents who had decided to go to Australia (Mom, later: “There were all these really sad, wet kangaroos sitting around, eating people’s privet hedges”), we came upon a note left by said Mom: “If the big raccoon scratches at the back door, let him in and give him some cat food.”
Big Raccoon. Scratches. TO BE LET IN. CAT FOOOOOOD.
Now, I have raccoons in my neighborhood in Texas. They are less obvious than the possums, but every year, their young climb into the recycling bin (boob-high on me, with a hinged lid) and can’t get out. I go out at least once a spring to move the recycling bin out to the curb and hear a low moaning, grumbling noise. That noise is at least one teenaged raccoon, stuck in the bin, who wants to get out.
So I tump the bin over and open the lid, and out s/he comes, and nods to me, and wanders off. So far I am still alive.
Penultimate husband! Stealing that one.
One time, when I was a wee winterbymorning-let, my grandma let a raccoon into the house because she refused to wear her glasses out of vanity and she thought it was our cat. The raccoon scratched at our back door and she granted it entry in our kitchen.
Shortly thereafter she changed her mind about this; she is a woman of firm notions and one of these notions is “Even beloved family pets have no business being in the kitchen if I arbitrarily decide I don’t want them here” and so she undertook to shoo it out, and failed.
I was intrigued by the strange noises coming from the kitchen, so I went to investigate. I was a little confused to find my grandmother chasing a raccoon around with a broom.
(The best part is that raccoons are not found in the motherland, so the realization that she had let a strange wild animal into the house was made still more horrible by her inability to grasp what the animal even was.)
omg this is just like that commercial! except it REALLY HAPPENED.
I would watch this movie.
YOU SCRUBBLEMENT UP YOUR WITCH HANDS AND I DON’T TRUST IT, THAT IS A HUMAN ATTRIBUTE AND I WANT YOU TO LEAVE THAT TO US, STOP BEFORE-WASHING AND RUBBLE-SCRITCHING YOUR FUR-FINGERS, YOU MASHED-DOWN SMALLBEAR
This passage is delightfully Dahl-like.
We had a raccoon show up on our porch to eat the cat food we leave out for the neighborhood strays. The dishes were empty, but he noticed the jar–with a screw-on lid, mind you, closed tightly–that held the cat food. He picked up that jar of food (by the handle!), dragged it to the garden, and unscrewed it, staring me right in the eyes the whole time. It’s like he was going, “You didn’t think I knew how to do this, did you, dummy?” There was no hesitation or anything, he unscrewed the jar, reached in, and shoved fistful after fistful of cat food into his mouth like this was a nightly ritual. It probably was.
Raccoons, man.
On one hand, they are cute. On the other hand, a rabid raccooon camped out under my grandmother’s car and prevented us from going to the pool on a super hot day. So.
Also, the world’s fattest, most evil raccoon brutally murdered my friend’s baby ducks. She found the carnage after being away for a night. The next night she woke up to a commotion, and looked outside to see it lumbering toward the very distressed momma duck. It had figured out how to unlatch the hutch they live in at night. She ended up having to leave a dog outside to guard the poor momma duck while she figured out a better set up.
So, maybe not that cute.
Li’l King Trashmouth!
This was my first thought too! Linda crowing, “He’s got a boyfriend, he’s getting marrrried!” was the moment I fell helplessly in love with Bob’s Burgers.
“Oh, my God, he just raised his paw. I think he just gave me the double guns. . . . Let’s put a hat on him.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IgqV-67ik
Does anyone else remember This American Life episode that involved a woman getting attacked by a raccoon, and they had to beat it to death with a tire iron, and then she almost got rabies because the health department is terrible and doesn’t communicate properly?
That pretty much soured me on raccoons. Also on our healthcare system.
I’m shocked it took this long to come up.
Every now and then this comes on the radio and every time I am stuck listening until it’s over, mildly traumatized. It seems like most people I know, all I have to say is “This American Life, raccoon” and they start going OH GOD NO.
I had forgotten this one! Now I know what I’m listening to for the next hour.
Also, for the record, I dislike raccoons. I have too many experiences where some surly raccoon tried to run me off my own space or got all pissed that I interrupted its trash-eating or was part of a snarling, screaming ball of psycho raccoons.
I’d forgotten that one, but the squirrel hate reminded me of one of my favorite This American Life bits, “Squirrel Cop,” which does indeed show that squirrels are not good houseguests.
Squirrel Coop is legit my favourite TAL episode/segment ever and I will listen to it and giggle from now until the end of eternity.
I have an EMBROIDERED PATCH of the flaming squirrel from that story. Best pledge-drive schwag ever.
Here’s the Squirrel Cop segment for everyone: https://vimeo.com/6442040
The story just gets worse and worse until the end, but it’s so worth it.
Mr Ipo turned me onto the Trash Panda subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/trashpandas) and now we just call them trash pandas. We bought the kids matching pjs with raccoons on them and the oldest child (4) refers only to those pajamas as “trash panda pajamas).
We once lived in a rental house with a dog door. I got up to get water one night and two raccoons were sitting in my kitchen eating the cat food, giving me the stinkeye, and not moving. I had to throw tupperware at them.
Their little urban raccoon singles club is under my bedroom window and it’s the most unholy soul-searing bunch of noise I’ve ever heard.
This is real: I saw a raccoon skulk through my yard last night and this morning my three year old found what looked like a piece of a tiny skull with a dead bug lying in it. I feel like this is some message that this bastard (the raccoon, not my son) thinks he owns the yard now but he’s got another thing coming.
Raccoon voodoo.
“…either be graceful and lithe all of times, or be clumsy and relatable on the ground.”
But penguins??? Mallory… have you fully considered the penguinatic ramifications of your rule?
Ah, I missed Food Trolling with Mallory, but animal trolling is also good
I am here for this. All of this.
I love that their Latin name translates to “before-dog washer”, because I imagine raccoons helpfully holding one of those ring hose-attachments up to your dog, who is perplexed but just goes with it.
“FURRY BASTARD!!!!”
— Mike Judge a/k/a Hank Hill
Aw, Bandit.
Also the Simpsons episode where the Germans take over the power plant — ACH, Raccoons! — “I call the big one Bitey.”
I love King of the Hill! I feel The Toast should address the magnificence that is Peggy Hill at some point.
So I used to work at a golf cart/bike rental on a Party Island, and we’d store the golf carts in this big building. We’d store the bikes in a little room attached to the building; it was accessible to the outside by a garage door, and to the inside of the building to another garage door. We didn’t lock those doors because we were all lazy dirtbag #teens.
We kept finding little pawprints all over the golf carts in the morning, and couldn’t figure out how they were getting made. well, finally, one of my coworkers came in really early, and caught a raccoon pushing up the garage doors so it could sneak in, eat trash off the carts, and then sneak out again in the morning. Two sets of garage doors! How did they know to do that!
Now I’m wondering why my hometown doesn’t have more raccoons, when we have a preponderance of squirrels and possums and skunks and turkeys and coyotes and sometimes even deer. I guess we have them in theory, but I’ve literally never encountered any.
Same. I know there are raccoons around. There must be. Mom and Dad found a baby out by itself once, but other than that I have never known any evidence of them. But I’m sure they’re there. They just must be a less bold breed of raccoon.
Cute animals are my favorite thing in the world, but I HATE raccoons too. Let’s see….when I was housesitting for my aunt, one knocked on the door in broad daylight…standing on it’s stupid hind legs. Another time, one the size of a pony was on my porch eating all the bird see. And then there were the drunk raccoons who attacked my campsite. They were licking fermented watermelon off the tent from the melon that exploded a few hours earlier. YUCK!
At this rate, sooner or later The Toast will have an official hate-on for the entire natural world except for like three dogs, two kittens, and maybe a philodendron named Sally.
My house in college had a philodendron we called Phil the Party Plant.
sally’s kind of a bitch though tbf
Charlie Potato will be safe though due to his tater status.
Of course, the first thing that spurs me to finally comment is raccoons. So, ok, here is my raccoon story:
Growing up in Vancouver, we knew there were raccoons around, knew to bring the cats in at night because a raccoon would definitely win THAT fight. But one evening, my dad saw a raccoon messing with the garbage can, and so he picked up the nearest object on the porch, which was a toy truck of my little brother’s, and threw it at the raccoon. I don’t think he hit it, but I think he came close. The raccoon stopped eating, but instead of running away, he just turned and stared at us like “HOW DARE YOU.”
Then he went back to eating.
Raccoons. They’re jerks.
All I have to add is that I call them rabies-knives.
In Toronto, we call them Trash Pandas. But we celebrate them when they’re dead (c.f. #deadraccoonTO)
Raccoons love nothing more than picking your sweet corn, eating it on the roof of your outbuilding, and throwing the cobs to the ground. Even when surrounded by field corn! They’re demons and I love them.
When, on a winter night, raccoons come into our barn to steal catfood and reverse-engineer the electric heaters, they will climb up on things so gravity will help them poop on as much as possible.
OK, I’m not sure they can reverse-engineer the heaters, but I’m sure about the poop.
Jenny Lawson on raccoons:
Lawson remembers one point in her childhood when her family kept a pet raccoon who, she says, was obsessed with washing things. “His name was Rambo, and he’d learned how to turn on the bathroom sink and would wash random things in it all the time, like it was his own private river,” she wrote. “Once, we came home to find Rambo in the sink, washing a tiny sliver of soap that had been a new bath-size bar that morning. He looked exhausted, and like he wanted someone to stop him and put him to bed, but when we tried to take away the last bit of soap he growled at us, and so we let him finish, because at that point I guess it was like a vendetta, if raccoons had vendettas.”
I am making unholy noises right now
All raccoons have vendettas.
After reading all these comments and having lived in a few parts of the US, both urban and rural, I’ve decided that raccoons are like people in that some are good and many are bad and everybody has various experiences with them. Hard stance.
Once my friend and I were walking and heard a horrible screaming sound like someone being killed in some unspeakable manner. We finally figured out that the sound came from two raccoons goin’ at it in a tree. As soon as we looked at them they stopped and stared back at us, waiting for us to leave.
The moral of the story is that raccoons have some VERY kinky sex, but you can’t watch.
“I don’t like the word “chittering” and that is the only sound a raccoon makes”
Not strictly true. When they have sex, they sound like robots being tortured.
I have video of raccoons having sex, and they’re being totally quiet. Also it went on FOR AGES. I had no idea. I had thought of them as wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am types.
Three raccoon stories for you:
1. My now-husband, when at university in Montreal, found a raccoon stranded on a traffic island on a large, busy boulevard. He PICKED UP the raccoon to help it across the street. (He was probably high at the time.) Naturally, the raccoon was not best pleased with this and bit/scratched him. Luckily for him, there is no rabies on the Island of Montreal, and also luckily for him he didn’t tell me this story until after we were married because I might not have stuck with him.
2. A couple of years ago I was camping and the campground was overrun with raccoons. We packed up all our food, etc., but one of my friends’ daughters threw up in their tent at night. Well, raccoons surrounded the tent hissing terrifyingly and my friend was trapped all night with a puking child and the glowing of horrible little eyes every time she flicked her flashlight around. Stuff of nightmares.
where’s the third story
WHERE’S THE THIRD STORY
I forgot the third (less dramatic) story! One morning in winter I was driving to the gym and there was a LINE of raccoons at a storm drain just before dawn, disappearing down it one after the other, all of them like orderly, horrific little commuters going through a subway turnstile. (If that is not dramatic enough for you ask me about my very dramatic Dead Bat Falling from the Ceiling story.)
please tell me!
I too want to hear the Dead Bat Falling from the Ceiling story!! Where iiiiiiis it!!!
The other day was the first warm day of spring. In the climate I live in a lot of people have whole house fans, giant fans that suck in cool evening or early-morning air from outside and vent it out the attic to cool off the house. We got one a couple of years ago. It has big wide slats in the ceiling that pivot open when you run the fan. Well, on the first hot day I turned on the fan after dusk, while I was trying to get my children to bed. I started down the stairs and directly under the slats was a mummified bat, just lying there, all brown and creepy looking. I COULD NOT deal and of course my kids and started freaking and I had to call my father-in-law and get him to come remove it because I am wimpy about dead animals. (My husband is in the hospital and when he gets home will be immune compromised so I was/am extra freaked out by the idea of having pests in the house.)
One the one hand, what are the odds it would die ON the whole house fan and thus fall from my ceiling into my home? On the other hand, good thing I did because, according to the bat pest control specialist, we “caught the infestation early.” I now know how they rid houses of bat infestations (expensively, is the answer) and more about the habits of bats than I wanted to.
All this said, I deeply pondered the options for Bats in My Home and I decided that Dead and Mummified is my top pick, followed distantly by Freshly Dead/Putrefying and Alive and Flapping About.
wobble-squample
I spent my idyllic childhood summers in the countryside, at my grandparents’ house on a tiny lake in rural Michigan. We had an attic bedroom that you could only access from outside the house via a set of stairs up along the side. It was charming and perfect for a child, except when you’d walk out, the sunshine of the morning, glittering all off the lake, and step directly into racoon shit.
You think raccoons are creepier than SEALS you are out of your mind Mallory, seals are the creepiest animal of all the two sides of their bodies movie as though they were legs but they are not legs ugggh seals
I am not a raccoon. There are no raccoons posting on the toast dot net our fingers are too small for mavis bacon to have taught us typing they would have to post in groups of several raccoons at once to even make this single post ahahaha
ooooo i love when mallory gets all swearengeny
Rascal at an impressionable age = all love for raccoons always
I desperately need someone to explain to me why I think this is quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever read. It probably has something to do with the grammar.
Because Mallory is a damn queen is why.
“They didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it disrespectful to 1) me personally and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t disrespect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.”
My lizard brain is not one bit convinced they can’t eat me. I tried to make myself go out to double-check the latch on the chicken coop one night when I heard them chittering, but one sweep of the flashlight beam captured six eyes glowing greenly 30 feet up in the avocado tree and suddenly I was inside my house slamming and locking the door.
Their insolence goes beyond unflinchingness in the face of yelling right to hunchy insouciance in the face of having table legs hurled at them. Again, I found myself giving up on the enjoyment of my own back porch and locking myself in the house. If only I were a better, softball-pitching kind of lesbian and could have hit him right in his bandit face!
And finally, a video of a raccoon stealing several bolts that I naively left on a table on said porch. https://www.facebook.com/alana.oneal/posts/101002…
Mallory, I’m sorry, but the Oakland raccoons are now hoarding hardware. We should probably all clear out of the east bay before they finish building… it.
Whilst camping several years ago, a raccoon lifted two large bags of chips that were sealed and clipped together by one of those heavy duty office binder clips.
At first my camp mates and I clapped, yelled and tried to shoo it away. It was startled, dropped the chips and started to waddle off into the wood. It stopped, turned around and realized it was surrounded by a mass of poison oak. It came back, picked up the chips it dropped, flipped us off and took the chips deep into the wood.
Later that night, we heard the rustling of chip bags and munching from high in a tree.
I live in the suburbs, but next to and backed up on a creek and little woodland, all very nice, yes. We have many critters, some more welcome than others, and raccoons certainly among them. Being familiar with their antics, I laughed in amusement/horror/recognition severally throughout this piece and attendant commentary. But even now I hear the scufflehandsteps of them in the yard. Reader, I suspect they heard me.
Somebody please check on aposiopetic.
Oh man, Mallory, how you would hate the movie Pom Poko.
Ehn, those are Tanukis, and therefore canids, and therefore a much less troublesome beast.
The way you describe raccoons, I almost believe they are the prototypical politician. Perhaps that demographic learned the wrong things from these noble beasts.
I wanted a pet raccoon SO MUCH when I was little. I asked for one three Christmases in a row and was genuinely surprised each time there was not a baby raccoon under the tree. I always send my mom whatever ‘look at this baby raccoon we raised with our dog’ story comes out and she finally went ‘FINE, I was wrong.’ I was like, ‘No, I realize now you were right. It would have been like my cat, but with hands. Total nightmare.’
I asked for a monkey every year. No potential for regrets there, I tell you.
I am late to this one, but needed to share that last summer a raccoon moved into a hole in my roof and gave birth to raccoon babies and they made the most messed up noises and I’m still kind of traumatized, a whole year after the raccoons were removed and the hole was fixed. I posted a pic of the grown up raccoon lurking around my deck and everyone was like SO CUTE and I was like, NO, EVIL. Raccoons are evil, yuck, the end.
Yup. You get a tip for that. First time I’ve ever tipped anyone in this way for their writing, which says a lot about us both.
I love how there are no periods after the first few. Lack of punctuation just made this more urgent and meaningful to me.
Some raccoons once at my entire attic, and I’ve resented them ever since. They still live there, I simply fled.
The wikipedia page for raccoons includes this sentence that needs to be adapted into a children’s book:
“A second population was established in eastern Germany in 1945 when 25 raccoons escaped from a fur farm at Wolfshagen, east of Berlin, after an air strike.”
Oh my god, it would be like Chicken Run but with raccoons. “They’re oooorganized….”
I would very much believe raccoons are organized.
When I was in middle school a raccoon drowned my dog. Straight up “Where the Red Fern Grows”-style. Jumped on his head and drowned him in the pond. I’ve loathed the creatures ever since. Glad I am not alone.
Nobody owns the night.
Sounds like something a raccoon would say.
I’m glad people are still commenting on this, because YOU GUYS, yesterday my husband and two of our friends and I were hanging out, having a fire in the backyard, and I read them this post and we all shared a hearty laugh. Then, after it got dark, we spied a raccoon in our cedar tree! He slipped over the fence when he realized we were watching him. BUT THEN, after our friends had gone, my husband and I covertly spied on our backyard from the kitchen, and the little guy came back! And he wandered all around, sniffing things, and he licked up some water from the end of our hose, and then he climbed on top of our carport roof and walked all the way to the kitchen window we were watching him through, and we all just looked at each other real up-close for a long time, IT WAS GREAT. Then he dug through our gutters for a little bit (?!) and wobble-squampled away when we laughed at him too loudly. Anyway, it was a perfect coincidence and a truly fantastic way to end the night.
I actually love raccoons because of all these things, but this was pretty much the best thing I’ve read in a long time.
Also I have always called raccoon noises purrs, not chitters. That’s their normal noises, of course, not their angry squawling when they are fighting or sexing or whatever other exciting activity raccoons get up to.
Hey, remember that time the raccoon figured out the latch on our henhouse and broke in at night and just killed all ten chickens, didn’t eat any of them but just killed them for the fun or the satisfaction of that killer instinct? That was cool…
Love this line: “They’re a dense badger lie”
Racoons do more than chitter.
Raccoons have a vocabulary of over 51 various vocalizations, and each one is beautiful
I recused one from a baby.
That racoon was the most amazing animal that I have ever come across.
Loving, playful, mischievous … the light of my life.
I would not suggest a racoon to anyone for a pet as they can be little monsters.
However I would not have passed up the opportunity to be mom to my little coonie.
Miss you buddy. <3
Raccoons are the people I adore most.
When my wallet got stolen at the local(ish) state forest, Mr Crow and I spun tales about how the raccoons had taken it and at that moment were calling Home Depot and ordering child sized tools and a gas grill and making plans to take over the park.
When ever we come home after a long trip, he goes in the house first, to turn the water back on, and chase out the raccoons, and make sure whatever they were reading on the internet (furry porn) is cleared so the kids don’t see it.
standing jokes. possibly not so funny.
This is actually sort of painfully beautiful, actually
Fur children.
Just… those words, together, in that order, forever.
Always fur children.
Once me and a friend were in Central Park going to Shakespeare in the Park and we took a wrong turn and came upon FIVE RACCOONS HOISTING AND HELPING EACH OTHER OVER A FENCE LIKE IT WAS A BANK HEIST. We both screamed and ran the other way. Days later we were still like, fuckin’ raccoons.
Raccoons are neither furry little degenerates, nor the wise folk of the forest. They are simply … different.
I lived on Whidbey Island for a while. The raccoons there can reach over five feet tall, standing on their hind legs. I have seen a raccoon family open a locking trash can, remove the items they were interested in, replace the spilled trash back into the can, then replace and re-lock the lid.
The local joke was that you could put one in a pair of overalls, and it could hold down a job.
My mother in law hates raccoons, because they eat kittens. She has witnessed several times the taking of kittens by the raccoons that hang out on her porch. They just walk up and take them with their hands!
Poor kitties.
"…for it to be allowed to stay in this one?" So you are for the killing of an entire species just because you don't like them–or because to make such cute little statements furthers–you think–your writing 'career'? I hope you don't have kids, influence any, or god forbid teach. Geesus. I'm appalled. If you are truly a good writer, you can write something good that does NOT encourage the harm of animals other than your own kind. This sort of thing is juvenile.
A raccoon bit my mother on the ankle and she had to get rabies shots for months. All raccoons must die, dirty garbage-scrounging, mother-biting vermin.
That raccoon suit is revolting.
My boss had a raccoon that, as a baby, was cute and cuddly. But it became irascible and wild as it grew up. He and his older son were the only two members in the family that could touch it. They often tried to get rid of it by taking it into the nearby mountains, but it always faithfully followed them back to the car and they didn’t have the heart to dump him.
Raccoons are THE WORST. A few months ago, a trio of them ATE PART OF MY HOUSE’S ROOF. They tore off shingles, ate the backing board and then pulled off the slats into splinters. They went into the attic, ripped out all the insulation, and destroyed everything, leaving a 2-foot hole in the roof. Which insurance doesn’t cover. Which cost more than $8,000 to repair. Raccoons can eat a dick and die.
Not as great as wot you wrote bout the possums but pretty darn excellent nonetheless.