The Panda's American cousin
2017-02-24
THE PANDA'S AMERICAN COUSINDid you know that the panda is not a bear but a raccoon? Or, more correctly, a member of the raccoon family? Well, what does that mean -- what is a raccoon?
The raccoon is an animal familiar throughout North America. Unlike the rare and endangered panda, though, the raccoon is a very common animal. They lurk by night, even in the cities, and are frequently encountered. They are remarkable and interesting animals. So I will tell you about the Chinese panda's smaller American cousin.
As mentioned before, raccoons live even in cities, as long as there are wild spots where they can hide. While other forest animals have declined or died out when forests are cut down, raccoons have survived and adapted to humans.
Raccoons have survived so well in the human world for several reasons. They are very smart. They are curious. They are omnivorous, eating almost anything edible. They have fully working hands, and, like monkeys, they are very clever at using their hands. Although they are not aggressive, they are very capable of defending themselves and can kill a dog that attacks them.
Raccoons have one other characteristic that has helped their survival: they are EXTREMELY CUTE.
Although raccoons can cause trouble for people, it is hard for anyone to hate raccoons, even when they raid the garbage cans or kill the chickens. They are just so cute!
Sometimes people intentionally leave out food for raccoons so that they can watch the cute raccoons when they come at night for the food. This is a mistake. If a raccoon associates your house with food, and you forget to leave out the food for them some night, they may break into your house to look for food. And then, watch out. They have hands and can open things, and they can climb anywhere. People who teach raccoons to think of their house as a place for food have discovered their kitchens completely trashed.
But raccoons are so cute, who can be mad at them?
Raccoons are nocturnal, traveling around at night in family groups looking for food. They make a lot of noise sometimes, so you know when they are around. A fun thing to do is to shine a flashlight around when you hear raccoons. If you hit a raccoon's eyes with the flashlight beam, their eyes will glow like car headlights in the darkness, and they can't seem to look away from the beam, so then you can see those two mysterious glowing white eyes in shining in the blackness, a neat effect!
Although it is illegal, people sometimes adopt baby raccoons as pets. Who can resist raccoons, after all? Raccoons are so cute. They are also very clean animals. Surely the perfect house pet? But raccoons are also very smart and curious and will open every cupboard in the house and get into everything. People who keep raccoons as house pets soon come to regret it. But raccoons are so cute, who wouldn't want one as a pet?
I saw a documentary recently about raccoons in Japan. No, they are not native to Japan. According to the documentary, someone made a movie from a book about a boy who had a pet raccoon named Rascal, and that movie became popular in Japan. So Japanese people fell in love with raccoons (they are so cute, and the Japanese people seem to be the world's greatest lovers of cuteness). So then Japanese people started getting raccoons as pets. Unfortunately, they soon learned this was a mistake. They wanted to get rid of the pet raccoons, but what to do with it? Well, in the book and movie "Rascal," the boy eventually let his raccoon loose in the wild. So the Japanese people let their raccoons loose. But there was no wild for the raccoons to go to. So the wild raccoons have started living under people's houses and in attics, and damaging the house. People have raccoon pee fall on their heads from the ceiling because of the raccoons living in their attics.
But still, raccoons are so cute. According to the documentary, there are proposals to exterminate these Japanese raccoons, but the people can't stand to exterminate something so cute.
I love seeing raccoons. They are so cute. Just like their cute cousin the panda.
Raccoons look like big rats to me. If I opened a bin and one of those was in there it would scare the hell out of me.
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