This raccoon has been hanging around here for a few years and recently started getting some of the cat food we leave outside, so I slowly made friends and eventually got it taking the pellets from my hand. I love watching the dexterity of its paws, very human-like. I eventually quit doing this, not good to feed wild animals, as it may encourage them to trust other humans, but it was a thrill to watch its handwork for a week or so.
Makes me realize how domestic cats and dogs came about; wild felines or canines hanging around at the entrance to caves or following nomadic tribes, becoming friends, family members, then being bred into different sizes, shapes, talents.
In our overly civilized lives, it’s a thrill to experience part of the “natural world,” or like 95% of our lineage: wild foods, fishing, making stuff by hand, harmonious interaction with other forms of life. To be sought out. Refreshing for the soul.
‘Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way’ John Muir.
What a beautiful raccoon Lloyd! And indeed what lovely and dextrous paws. Not dissimilar to the tactile hands of the beautiful rescue rats my girlfriend and I used to care for. Who were so loving. I’m currently reading ‘Muir among the animals: The wildlife writings of John Muir’. From which I got the above quote. Another person who realised and respected the wonder of animals. Or what he called his ‘horizontal brothers’. And was ahead of his time. And still is sadly. ‘Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved’. Indeed.
Lloyd, thought you might get a kick out of this racoon trained to herd goats (on a farm in Sarver, Pennsylvania.)
https://nypost.com/video/raccoon-herding-goats-is-a-sheepdog-in-training/