When I was a little kid my father
baited a camera to take pictures of raccoons in our backyard. Later, we adopted
an abandoned kit, and named it Loki because my mother had recently read Norse
mythology to us. My father made a two-level cage for him with a chicken-wire
enclosed base, and a log that lead up to a plywood hutch.
Raccoons do not make good pets. They have long claws and sharp teeth, and they remain wild. I just finished watching the documentary Raccoon Nation
about these creatures who work the night shift in our towns and cities. Their
urban population is booming. Toronto is the raccoon capital of the world. Surprisingly, it turns out that the cosmopolitan raccoon only stakes out a three-block territory,
and does not require a natural source of water. The documentary goes abroad to Kyoto and Kassel. In the 1970s Nippon Animation produced a cartoon called Rascal the Raccoon
based on a children's novel by Sterling North. The viewers went gaga over it, and at the peak of the craze imported 1,500 kits a year from North America. As
the kits matured and expressed their wild nature, the pet owners followed the storyline and
released their raccoons into the woods near temples, which the raccoons have
damaged at an alarming rate. Now 10,000 raccoons are captured and killed each
year in Japan in a monk-approved plan to eradicate them and to save their 1,000-year-old places of worship. The situation is a little different in Germany where a pair of raccoons
was introduced in the 1930s to amuse hunters. Now the population is out
of control. Kassel has the biggest raccoon population in Europe with an average
of 100 raccoons per square kilometer. A failed hunting solution turned the
inhabitants to good-old German engineering to outwit these prowlers. Raccoons, however, like a challenge and our effort to thwart them increases their intelligence. Coincidentally, one North American interviewee
in the documentary spoke of our assisting the creation of the über raccoon, while another compared their
bodies to sumo wrestlers. They are not unlike humans; omnivores with good
manual dexterity. The wildlife biologist, Stan Gehrt, who is featured in the
film does not write them off.
I wouldn't put raccoons quite on our level, but they're trying to get there...They're catching up.
I wouldn't put raccoons quite on our level, but they're trying to get there...They're catching up.