Procyon lotor, the Raccoon

 Image by Dave Menke, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Identification:

The Raccoon is a mammal measuring up to 30 inches and weighting up to 30 pounds, though most individuals are smaller. He has dark mask-like fur around his eyes, and a long tail ringed with dark fur. He is an adept tree climber, and excellent at manipulating objects with his paws. He has a developed sense of touch and will turn objects around with his paws in order to understand them, much like a dog might sniff everything in sight with his nose. He is an omnivore, hunting and gathering anything ranging from trash to crayfish from a local stream. You will most likely spot him at night. 

The Raccoon; Neighborly Habits, Folksy Manners

Not all animals adapt easily to society. Our expansion and encroachment upon wild lands typically displace native inhabitants who flee before the onslaught of civilization. Though normally deleterious to their health and well being, forced relocation is often a wild animal's only practical solution. In newer or more rural communities these immigration~migration dramas typically involve a larger cast of characters, with black bears pawing through garbage receptacles, and moose stumbling into traffic. However, by the time so-called civilization has taken firm root, only a few hardies find themselves adaptable to life among the humans. Their numbers are mainly comprised of a few urban dwellers: squirrels, pigeons, rats, possums, and; the object of our current study, the raccoon.

The raccoon is sometimes overlooked due to his nocturnal habits. As he is rarely out and about during the day, we forget his presence until he raids our trash, or his mate decides our attic makes a perfect starter home. Despite the inconvenience, it is in part these traits that  make the raccoon well suited for urban life.

In some ways the raccoon is not so different from ourselves. Alone in the wilderness; where he contends against only nature herself, he ranges widely, marking out territories of over 10 square miles. There he blissfully frolics, hunts, forages, and sleeps the day away. This idyllic life is marred only by the occasional great horned owl or coyote attack. And; like ourselves, the raccoon will blithely toss this all aside for the convenience and excitement of the city. Given the choice between rolling pastures and cramped tenements, where greasy food and female raccoons of questionable morals abound, he will opt for the latter every time.

We might be tempted to view the raccoon as a johnny-come-lately to metropolitan life. If we are urbane Larry Appletons, the raccoon is a quaint Balki Bartokomus; yet to shed his rustic myposean mannerisms. Still worse, he tends to live in squalor, carry diseases, and eat refuse.

All this is true, yet lest we become too smug, we would do well to ponder our own comportment in early city life. While we have been at it a long time; confirming the oft misconstrued Aristotelian label Polis animal, our city dwelling history is hardly all indoor plumbing, weekly garbage collection, and functioning HVAC. In ancient cities our ancestors thought nothing of lighting a cooking fire in the living room, or tossing sewage out the windows onto unsuspecting passerbies.While the raccoon may harbor parasites and make a mess of your chimney, he has the good sense not to cook his dinner in the sitting room. If he is smelly and dirty, well we lived that way ourselves for a few millennia. So let's not judge him too harshly. To quote Julius Caesar (the emperor, not the eponymous Shakespearean play), "He who reflects on another's lack of breeding wants it himself."

The Raccoon; Still Wild

Although it behooves us to refrain from judging the raccoon's moral character, this must be distinguished from making an informed practical judgment as to how our relationship ought to be structured. While the former is ungentlemanly, the latter is merely an exercise in prudence. One simple caveat ought to guide our approach. This is: above all things, the raccoon remains a wild animal. 

Though it be ever unfortunate, we remain fallible creatures. When faced with a charmingly masked furry face, and person-like paw manipulations, we sometimes fancy the raccoon not only like  ourselves, but even to be a sort of quasi-human in the vein of nymphs, sprites, or Pan the goat god. How easily our brains turn to ineffectual goo when introduced to adorableness. Consider the poet Sexton, who saw the raccoon as a dancing party guest, whose visit could presumably have been interchangeable with a social call from the long dead French tragedian Jean Racine. In clinical psychology, a commonly observed cognitive distortion is viewing a low probability event as possessing a high probability. While this might more typically involve fearing poisonous spiders in the kitchen, or contaminated cereal, I have no doubt that equating a raccoon in the backyard with visitations by shades of 17th century playwrights would offer a textbook example.

While many are rooted firmly enough to never consider the raccoon a paranormal soiree attendee, the danger remains that his intelligence and remarkable dexterity will be taken as evidence that he is a hair's breadth away from total domestication. This is a mistake. It may be helpful to recall the distinction between taming and domestication. The former effects the behavior of individuals within a wild population through incentives, punishments, or manipulation of instinctual behaviors (e.g. imprinting). The latter is the culmination of generations of selective breeding to change the behavior of the species as a whole. The "tamed" animal remains wild at heart, or alternatively may be so emotionally impaired as to be the merest shadow of his true self. Thus, given a lapse in vigilance, a run of the mill "tame" tiger may forget himself and maul his trainer at any time, while a beagle who mauls is rightfully viewed as a defective outlier. Your beloved spaniel is domesticated, but the young deer who Emperor Julian the Apostate beguiled into becoming a poster fawn for pagan regression was tame. Left to its own devices, it would assuredly have made a mess of the imperial tent and proved itself incapable of observing even the barest norms of polite society.

Taming has its place. For an injured or orphaned wild animal, human care giving may be the only option. In these cases it is best to contact a local wildlife rehabilitator, who will be trained in working toward the end of eventually returning the animal to the wild. If this is not possible, the animal may live out its days as a tamed creature. In no case should you attempt to tame a raccoon yourself. This admonition includes semi-taming practices such as trying to lure them close to your house with food, or teaching them to sit on your lap and eat from your hand. While the raccoon has adapted well to urbanization, it is wrong to think that either of us strictly benefits from a close proximity to the other. On the raccoon's part, contact with humans increases road kills, and forced relocation or extermination when he selects the wrong home for a den. On our part, offering raccoons excessive encouragement can lead to damage to our houses, and diseases such as rabies and roundworm. Indeed, according to news reports, raccoons in central park have experienced a spike in rabies over the last decade. Anyone who has sniffled his way through the magnificent film Old Yeller can attest to the heart rending consequences of a rabies outbreak. As with the other animals discussed throughout this guide, the raccoon's independence ought to be observed and protected. Though he seems almost human at times, attempts to render him so more fully will often result in heartache and disappointment for all involved.

Further Research