Digging Through Dumpsters and Hiding From Park Rangers: Words a Raccoon Lives and Dies By
Raccoon Reviews. "Nighttime Raccoon Experience". 2015.
The sun is down, the full moon is up, and the crickets are chirping. I wake up in a lodge that some beavers had just abandoned the day before. I hear a grumble and feel something in my stomach telling me that it is time for my next meal. I could feed on some blackberries or the occasional crayfish, but I've developed a taste for human food. I know of a few places where I can score some human food; an uncleaned park, some trash cans in the neighborhood, and a dumpster behind a building with a bright yellow sign illuminating the surrounding area. I always see these humans frequenting this building to grab a meal of their own. I could make a run at this dumpster, but the last time I tried there was a pack of hungry coyotes already eating up the leftovers. I feel my stomach grumble again and decide that I better try and see if those fearsome coyotes beat me to it.
I scurry over to the dumpster to find a pack of five coyotes devouring leftover cheeseburgers and French fries. I attempt to communicate with these beasts, but all I can muster out is a quiet whistle. Almost instantaneously, five coyote heads simultaneously spit wrappers out of their mouths, and I see ten eyes all focused on me. Once again, I try to hash it out with them, but these monsters clearly don’t speak the same language as I. They growl, bark, and snarl at me. I don’t need to speak their language to understand what they’re trying to tell me. In an instant, I scurry off back into the woods in my secluded beaver lodge to ponder my next plan.
Hayes, Merdies. "Coyote sightings increase locally". 2017
Now that I’m back in the comfort of my hijacked beaver lodge, I go over my options again. There’s the neighborhood with green garbage cans littered on every side of the road, and there’s the park with a lazy ranger who I know doesn’t clean up around there. There’s also a great chance that this ranger is probably sleeping when he should be working, so I decide to take my chances with the park.
I get to the park and just as I suspected, the ranger is nowhere in sight. Rather than quietly creeping around the park and taking my time to dig through the garbage cans, I dive right into them. The first can I see is full of dead leaves and grass clippings, not the ideal meal for a hungry raccoon. This angers me, so in the next can I dig more vigorously, there has to be some food in here somewhere right? Wrong. This can is full of more dead leaves and grass clippings. Did the park ranger actually do his job and clean up around here? Finally, in the third can that I dig into there is a half-eaten cheeseburger. As soon as I get a few bites in, I hear a door open, and footsteps marching in my direction. Now I have a decision to make. I could stay, finish this burger, and hope that I stay out of sight, or I could make a run for it and return back to the beaver lodge hungrier than when I left it. Temptation gets the best of me, and I finish the burger in a few more bites as quietly as possible. I peek my head out of the can to find no one in sight. I then turn around in the other direction to find a park ranger staring dead into my black-masked eyes. I am not familiar with this face, he must be a new ranger, this explains why this park is actually clean for once. The ranger appears to be holding some sort of metal object in his left arm. He steadies the object on his right shoulder and aims it in my direction. I hear a click and a pop, and I am out like a light.
Wu, Katherine. "How Humans Created the Ultimate Superpests". 2018.
I am awakened by hisses, growls, and a bright light beaming down onto my closed eyes. I slowly open my eyes and begin to find out that I am enclosed in a tiny space with bars preventing me from escaping. I take a good scan of my surroundings and soon discover that I am surrounded by my own kind. Nothing but black masks and ringed tails in sight. I whistle and screech in an attempt to get their attention, but they all seem out of it. Each and every one of them have foam dripping from their snouts, and they are growling like the coyotes I ran into earlier. There is clearly something off about these raccoons. Suddenly, I see two older male humans in long, white lab coats communicating and pointing their fingers at one of the more rabid raccoons. One of the humans has a syringe in one hand with a long needle coming out of it. The other has a bundle of delicious berries in his hands. They appear to be debating about how to tranquilize the rabid raccoon and move him to a more secluded area. Without warning, the human with the berries distracts the rabid raccoon while the human with the syringe pokes the large needle into the raccoon’s cage and sticks him with it. Within seconds, the raccoon goes from wild animal to completely unconscious. The other human sticks the berries in his pocket, opens the cage, carries the raccoon out upside down by his tail, and moves him to another room.
A few moments go by and I see the lab coats carry the raccoon out of the room, again holding him by his tail. When they first carried him into the room, I could see his chest slowly pumping up and down, indicating that he was still breathing. Now though, he looked more inanimate than the half-eaten burger that I had earlier. They again repeat this process with the most aggressive raccoons. Berries in hand, needle in cage, raccoon down, and carried out by the tail.
WLTX. "Rabid raccoon found in Camden". 2020.
Some more moments go by, and I can feel the humans shift their focus towards me. They both simultaneously point their fingers in my direction, each with an equally menacing grimace across their faces. Like clockwork, they attempt to repeat the process that was successful in putting down so many other raccoons. Unlike the others though, I am not rabid, and I have paid close attention and caught on to their method. They approach my cage with haste. Same protocol as usual, one of the lab coats shove berries in my face while the other sticks the needle in. Only this time, I don’t fall for the trick. As soon they stick the berries within reach, I snatch at them with my snout and pull them into the cage. The human that lost his berries then reaches his fingers into the cage, and I bite down on them with all of the might that I have left. The other human is then forced to open the cage and I bolt out of there.
Once I get back outside, I realize that I am in unfamiliar territory. I gaze around at my surroundings, but I have no clue where I am. Suddenly, I notice a dark-green object slowly moving that is full of trash bags and other goodies. I see humans in bright-green vests just throwing piles upon piles of half-eaten food items into this snack-filled heaven. Just as I scurry up to this treasure and attempt to snag something out of it, I see a large object come down from above and crush all of the loot. A mix of emotions come over me. I am shocked, devastated and frightened all at the same time, but I have to keep moving and satisfy this hunger.
Weise, Elizabeth. "Cell phones thrown in the trash are exploding, causing 5-alarm fires in garbage trucks". 2018.
I continue my journey for some time until I come upon the neighborhood that I pondered about earlier. Surely there must be cans full of half-eaten snacks and other goodies here. I come upon large rows of cans lining up each side of the road. I excitedly scurry over and dig into the nearest can. As luck may have it though, the can is empty. There’s not even a single piece of chicken or thrown out pet food left over. I hop over into the next can and thud all the way into the bottom, this one is empty as well. Every can I check in the neighborhood is completely empty. Suddenly it hits me, those humans with the bright-green vests must have already taken all of the snacks from this neighborhood. Tired, hungry, and defeated, I slowly limp back into the forest hoping that I can find just a few berries to consume.
Back in the forest, I find a bush full of ripe black berries. I devour the berries and find my way back into the beaver lodge. Though I’m disappointed that the only scraps I could get my hands on were a half-eaten cheeseburger, I am satisfied knowing that I did not share the same fate as the other raccoons. I den back into the beaver lodge knowing that I must rest up if I want to do this all over again tomorrow night, for this is the life of a North American raccoon.
Works Cited
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Heimbuch, Jaymi. “10 Fascinating Facts About Urban Coyotes.” Urban Coyote Initiative, 2020, urbancoyoteinitiative.com/10-fascinating-facts-about-urban-coyotes/.
Wu, Katherine J. “How Humans Created the Ultimate Superpests.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 9 July 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-it-comes-humans-and-wildlife-whos-bothering-whom-180969567/.
“Coyote Sightings Increase Near Housing Development.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 2 Sept. 1997, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-sep-02-me-28155-story.html.
Schwalbach, Joseph, and /Joseph Schwalbach. “North American Raccoons.” Raccoon Reviews, 26 July 2015, www.raccoon.reviews/na-raccoon-reviews.
Wltx. “Rabid Raccoon Found in Camden.” Wltx.com, WLTX, 22 July 2020, www.wltx.com/article/news/local/rabid-raccoon-found-in-camden/101-19c68135-7c17-453f-b29a-28ca47d481e1.
Weise, Elizabeth. “Cell Phones Thrown in the Trash Are Exploding, Causing 5-Alarm Fires in Garbage Trucks.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 20 May 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/18/cell-phones-lithium-ion-batteries-exploding-causing-trash-fires/619897002/.
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