Every day should be raccoon appreciation day

Originally published at: Every day should be raccoon appreciation day - Boing Boing

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Please just remember to also carefully observe B. procyonis disapproval day while appreciating racoons.

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I let the raccoons, armadillos and probably dogs to dig up my compost pile. Saved me the work of turning it over. All I had to do was rake it back up into a pile.

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For Torontonians like myself, every day is both raccoon appreciation day, and raccoon irritation day. For an animal that does so much damage and frustrates us so much, we kinda love the little trash pandas.

I was once in a language class in Mexico with a fellow Canadian. The teacher was Mexican and kind of fascinated by mapaches, because they apparently didn’t have them where she was from.

We told her tons of stories about the havoc raccoons caused back home. My fellow student had reluctantly had to shoot at one that had broken into his home (a cabin in the woods) and torn through all his food.

Their destructiveness was news to her. She said, “Wow! If they cause so much damage, I’m surprised someone doesn’t just kill them all off.”

“Oh, no,” said the one-time shooter, aghast. “They’re so cute!

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raccoons amaze GIF

ares raccoons GIF

raccoons wants GIF

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In my Toronto neighbourhood every Tuesday is Raccoon Evolution Day, when we put out the latest redesigns of our garbage bins in our ongoing project to breed smarter raccoons. Results so far are promising.

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In my Toronto neighbourhood every Tuesday is Raccoon Evolution Day,

I used to live in the east end, where literally every house had its own raccoon on garbage day. We had one of the early iterations of the green bin, which ‘locked’ by means of a metal latch that folded down and was too hard, physically, for a raccoon to open.

One day I came outside and saw them approaching the green bins in groups of two or three and collectively throwing themselves at the bins to knock them over. A certain percentage of the bins would pop open as they hit the ground and presto: trash piñata. If the bin didn’t pop open, they’d just move on and try next door.

It’s not just their amazing, grabby little hands. It’s the fact that they understand teamwork.

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They still come in the house every night, I just don’t record them any more. Raccoon! (video)

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Maybe I’m showing my age, but I remember Raccoon appreciation day as being on Saturday mornings:

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Fellow Torontonian here, and I remember a conversation with a PhD candidate from Australia who was interning with us for a couple of months; he and his wife said that although they were living in the downtown area, they had never seen a raccoon. I said that they had; there was no way they hadn’t seen one, but probably thought it was a large cat in the dark.

They were also curious about chipmunks, and had trouble wrapping their minds around ground squirrels.

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KiltedCat (indoors only) does not share the appreciation and would like you all to know that there is a fucking trash panda outside. And we should really get out of bed at 3 am and take this threat seriously.

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I ran into a fellow dog walker this morning who said that she had one in the house last night, making that screeching noise they make.

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Is that a ukulele soundtrack? Better yet, is that a ukulele soundtrack that doesn’t sound like the opening to Hey Soul Sister? Because I am very much down with ukulele soundtracks that don’t sound like Hey Soul Sister.

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Yes, I have a YouTube channel full of ukulele videos.
WARNING: This is a YouTube channel full of ukulele videos!

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I don’t think the raccoons are confused.

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