This past Monday morning, as I walked out my back door to the dental practice early, I headed straight towards the fishing shop. He woke up and growled, low-pitched sounds like an angry dog. I was sI was surprised to see him there, but he wasn't supposed to be. Anyway, the rocaon was in the same place the night before. None of us knew that we would be famous online.
This raccoon and I have a history. Weeks ago, I saw him hanging around my place. In time, she became even more courageous. When I got home this past Sunday night, I saw him full of darkness, above my back door. I thought it was a lost cat until I got closer. My back lamp found my movement and started down. I am shocked to see a raccoon, with its tail between its legs, its body almost faint. But he did not run away. He just sat there. For a moment, we just look around.
Then I did what someone else would do in 2020: I took out my phone, snapped a photo, and added it to my Instagram account. I wrote a blank book about how my neighbors do not drop their garbage bins into the sidewalks we are traveling on, which should be a raccoon attraction. Then I turned around and went to the front of my building, using another door to my apartment, and went to sleep.
But the raccoon was there the next day. After a few Google searches, I was convinced the raccoon was injured or sick, possibly with rabies. According to the Internet, loud noises would scare him. So I opened my back door and slapped my hand against the screen, shouting “Ooh!”
I shouted “Ooh” 30 times. The raccoon has just grown in response. I pulled out a broom and pulled him out of it. More haircuts. I threw myself at the screen door many times. The raccoon never broke, instead treading his body into a furry ball. He was to try
Call me my local chapter on animal control. A city worker knocked on my door ten minutes later. I told him about marijuana. He nodded, politely and sullenly, while also writing an unanswered aura of "Why on Earth have you called Animal Control for this thing?" He walked over to my back door and got well at the raccoon, how to talk shyly to a child hiding behind a bed. I instantly felt like a complete asshole. What the fuck was it, I hit the back door and hit that poor guy with a broom? Obviously I should have just talked to this rrocon like he was in the pool person.
From my high point on the driveway, I couldn't see exactly what he was doing, so I don't know how he worked out the following magic piece: The Animal Control Officer persuaded the raccoon to turn over the treasure he found. It was a small plastic bag that had one piece of bacon inside it. I don't even know where he was hiding this; under her body perhaps? He came back to me and held me up with a knowing smile. “That's why he's here,” she said. I complained about how my neighbors would never get out their trash.
“She's not sick,” he continued. “You're just sleeping. Do you really need to use the back door? Because he looks comfortable. ”
This was not what I expected. I thought Animal Control would make the raccoon leave. It is possible put on a pair of ovens and take him to the forest? I was tortured, confused, trembling at how glad I was that the raccoon was not sick. I felt embarrassed. Who was I to tell a raccoon where he could and couldn't sleep? An Animal Control employee went back to my station, reassuring me that the raccoon would leave alone but would call him the next day if he refused. I went back inside and did the only thing I could think of:
As I write this, for the first time Send to that thread has over three thousand favorites. I've never been a virus before, but it often happens when I tell a clean joke. It never happened because I described something that happened in my life.
All day long, strangers would answer my text by asking questions about the raccoon, and ask me if this was a part Animal Crossing marketing (to my knowledge, of course). Every few hours, I would shake my head outside to see if the raccoon was still spinning in my stool, falling without a care. At about 5 pm, worried that the raccoon had not improved an inch, I updated my thread to tell the internet about the piece of paper he had received and the willingness of my neighbors to drop their garbage bags. (I've left a note at my neighbors' door about this situation.)
I didn't tell the internet about bacon at first because it seemed almost fake. Understand me, come on. Bacon? How can you access the Internet? The whole story was just the kind of viral Twitter thread that would have annoyed the hell out of me when I saw it in my timeline. Its cut feels so perfect, it's almost done.
The next day, I woke up to find a raccoon that had gone. But the rocaon saga is not over for me. The next day after that, my sister texted me Local news story about a raccoon on a back porch. At first I just assumed that a certain journalist had seen my tweets and covered the subject without contacting me. I felt discouraged; my email is in my Twitter bio, after all. But this was not the case.
Apparently, the Animal Control worker thought the whole situation was as funny as I was, so he, like me, took it straight to social media. She has written pictures of herself of the raccoon and his hard-won bacon at Waltham The official Animal Control Facebook page, leading a local news reporter to share their posts (not mine). Shortly thereafter, a reporter received my tweets and sent me an email to comment.
Every time I walk out my back door, I think of marijuana. It was a great scene that seemed customized on social media, of course. But it was also an anonymous meeting that forced me to question the border between the wilderness and the “safety” of people in my apartment. It reminded me of many times when I chased deer or rabbits when I was walking in the neighborhood, or the time when a coyote killed a cat on the outskirts of a house down the street from my child's home. Above all, it reminded me Goose's game with no title, and in particular this story on the blog Grace In The Machine is titled "Goose's game with no title and Natural Fault Factors. ”
“I get bedbugs out of the house,” writes Grace. “I don't know where my food comes from. I don't have a garden, and my partner takes care of a few molded plants around our apartment. Most of my interactions with the natural world are based on a need for control and fear about the loss of that law. ”
Goose's game with no title it plays into the overcrowding and mistreatment of people who tend to lose control – a reminder that we are the one that unites, not the animals around us. In the words of Grace:
The goose does not work by human code of conduct. The type of damage it causes is the kind of damage we will suffer from being in nature, even though it is small in nature. & # 39; Compliance & # 39; nature is full of contradictions. Both animals compete and be present, upset and profitable. The existence of other beings to accept this contradiction. It is heartwarming that despite all the disturbance and harm the causes of goose, local people do not harm. They take that injury as a cost of living near nature. They try to calm him down, to stop the goose from coming in. But their efforts are in vain, and they cannot succeed. To end its life would be cruel.
Today, it is snowing. My back door doesn't look as easy as it did earlier this week. I hope my neighbors start taking their trash to the bins. But I hope the raccoon has found a warm and safe place to sleep.
