Last night I received a very unusual escort on part of my walk home. I’d been hanging out with a couple of friends, and after escaping the room as the floor was suddenly transformed into lava we parted ways and headed back to our respective dorms.
It was a normal evening, just starting to get dark and not quite chilly. It had been a beautiful fall day. I had music playing around in my head like usual, causing me to sway back and forth in time and occasionally dance a step or so. I can’t not move when my brain is playing Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog. It’s impossible.
But then I see him. Or her, I really don’t know, but I’m going to use masculine pronouns. He’s loping along next to the science building, almost catlike but not quite. I know this creature. We have met before. As I get closer, the ringed tail and masked face prove me right, it’s the raccoon that lives somewhere near this part of campus.
I resist my natural instinct to try and coax it over and pet it. This is a bad idea and I know it. Wild animal. Not a pet. But everything in me wants to be friends. I’m like this with the squirrels too. Out of respect, I give it a quiet greeting and slowly continue on my way.
He keeps pace with me, sticking close to the wall while I remain several yards away on the sidewalk. He’ll run ahead a little way, then stop to investigate the pipes that let water off the roof when it rains, and then catch up again. We walk like that until we get to the corner of the building, where there is a trashcan. I pause as he climbs up and begins digging, and another girl stops to take a picture. I look for my phone with the idea of doing the same, but naturally it is not in my purse. For a few minutes I stay and watch him.
He is not afraid of us. He doesn’t want us close, but unless we actively threaten him he is not going to run. He sits on the trashcan, munching on whatever it is he has found. He watches us just as we watch him.
Finally, he finishes eating and I decide to move on, so he jumps down from his perch, turns the corner and disappears into the garden with the wilting sunflowers.
I wonder sometimes how much we have changed the natural behaviors of animals. In a world without humans, he would not have been digging through the garbage can looking for dinner. He would have found it elsewhere. I think I read at some point that raccoons are the only mammals with a wider habitat range now than before human populations got so crazy big.
They’re smart creatures, raccoons. He knew that we were responsible for his meal, knew that we were not active predators. He’s smart enough to know how to use us to live more comfortably, and smart enough to still have some healthy amount of fear.
I had a hen named Cricket once, a pretty white bird with more survival skills than any other chicken I’ve raised. She knew humans all her life, knew that we gave her food and that her predators wouldn’t mess with us. But she wasn’t quite tame enough to be a pet. When we were out at the farm, she would follow us around at a distance of a few yards, never letting us catch her, but also never letting us get too far away. Like the raccoon, she knew enough to use us.
Ironically, she was probably killed by a raccoon. We had a new set of pullets, and we locked Cricket in the hen house with them hoping she’d teach them a thing or two about survival. A raccoon got in and wiped them all out.
I guess her humans didn’t come through for her that time.