Raccoon Parents: or why rabid, prickly animals are just like us

funny-pictures-evil-raccoon

Ah, the joys of a slow news day on the Times’ Motherlode blog. What sweetmeats of journalistic nonsense does it bring us, our faithful DadWagon readers? A feast for the senses, indeed!  Nothing short of raccoon parenting, folks, as in why did the evil little beastie cross the road with its child and not let it get hit by a hipster biker in Central Park where the author spent part of a morning instead of working (whew):

in the dappled sunlight by the Harlem Meer on the roadway around Central Park on Tuesday morning around 9. Bicyclists rounding the curve at the northeast corner of the park bore witness to a typical urban family drama.

Cyclists, runners, a police officer in a scooter and a parks inspector had formed a wide protective circle around a toddler raccoon and its mother, who tried in various and increasingly exasperated ways to get her progeny off the asphalt and back into the leafy green interior of the park.

She tried leading it. She tried cajoling in raccoon language. She tried to grab it and drag it, an attempt that involved a tussle and some raccoon-yelling. She tried feigning indifference, walking off without looking back, hoping her child would become nervous and follow.

Finally, perhaps reassured that the humans at the scene would help make sure her babe came to no harm, she retreated to greenery, watchfully waiting. Her baby headed in the wrong direction, turned around, took a few more steps back toward its mother and stopped. By this point, it was pretty worn out. The road was already nice and toasty from the morning sun. It curled up to take a little rest.

See, NYC is a jungle, we live in it, and eventually the raccoons will steal our condos, revamp the public schools, and create a property tax system that is both progressive and Utopian, while reflection Georgeist theory… or something like that.

On a more coherent note, anyone notice a similarity between this tale and Robert McCloskey’s “Make Way for Ducklings”?

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About Theodore

Theodore Ross is an editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Saveur, Tin House, the Mississippi Review, and (of course), the Vietnam News. He grew up in New York City by way of Gulfport, MS, and as a teen played the evil Nazi, Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. He lives with his son, J.P. in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a book about Crypto-Jews.

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