I have become so attuned to her habitsâher departure as the light fades at quarter past eight, her return to the hungry kittens at about 3 A.M ., just before daylight, after the nightâs adventuresâthat I have taken to waking at three to watch her home-coming and admire her faint silhouette against the sky as she carefully sniffs the bark all around the hole to learn if anything has been along during her absence and if any child of hers has disobeyed the instructions about not venturing out of the hole.
My introduction to raccoons came when, as a child, I read in a book by the late Dr. William J. Long a chapter called âA Little Brother to the Bear.â I read all the books of William J. Long with a passionate interest, and learned the Milicete Indian names for the animals. (Dr. Long always called a bear Mooween; he always called a chickadee Châgeegee-lokh-sis. This device stimulated me greatly, but if I remember right, it annoyed Theodore Roosevelt, who was also interested in nature.) I must have read the raccoon story twenty times. In those days, my imagination was immensely stirred by the thought of wildlife, of which I knew absolutely nothing but for which I felt a kind of awe. Today, after a good many years of tame life, I find myself in the incredibly rich situation of living in a steam-heated, electrically lit dwelling on a tarred highway with a raccoon dozing in her penthouse while my power lawn mower circles and growls noisily below. At last I am in a position to roll out the green carpet for a little sister to the bear. (I have even encountered Dr. Longâs daughter Lois in my travels, but it was not among raccoons that we met, and she seemed to have no mark of the Milicete Indian about her whatsoever, and never in my presence has she referred to a great horned owl as Kookooskoos, which saddens me.)
There are two sides to a raccoonâthe arboreal and the terrestrial. When a female coon is in the tree, caring for young, she is one thing. When she descends and steps off onto solid earth to prowl and hunt, she is quite another. In the tree she seems dainty and charming; the circles under her eyes make her look slightly dissipated and deserving of sympathy. The moment she hits the ground, all this changes; she seems predatory, sinister, and as close to evil as anything in Nature (which contains no evil) can be. If I were an Indian, naming animals, I would call the raccoon He Who Has the Perpetual Hangover. This morning, conditions inside the hole are probably unbearable. The kittens are quite big now, the sun is hot, and the hole is none too roomy anywayâitâs nothing but a flicker hole that time has enlarged. So she has emerged, to lie in full view on the horizontal limb just under her doorway. Three of her four legs are draped lifelessly over the limb, the fourth being held in reserve to hang on with. Her coat is rough, after the night of hunting. In this state she presents a picture of utter exhaustion and misery, unaccompanied by remorse. On the rare occasions when I have done a little hunting myself at night, we sleep it off together, she on her pallet, I on mine, and I take comfort in her nearness and in our common suffering.
I guess I have watched my coon descend the tree a hundred times; even so, I never miss a performance if I can help it. It has a ritualistic quality, and I know every motion, as a ballet enthusiast knows every motion of his favorite dance. The secret of its enchantment is the way it employs the failing light, so that when the descent begins, the performer is clearly visible and is a part of day, and when, ten or fifteen minutes later, the descent is complete and the coon removes the last paw from the tree and takes the first step away, groundborne, she is almost indecipherable and is a part of the shadows and the night. The going down of the sun and the going down of the coon are interrelated phenomena: a man is lucky indeed who lives where sunset and
My introduction to raccoons came when, as a child, I read in a book by the late Dr. William J. Long a chapter called âA Little Brother to the Bear.â I read all the books of William J. Long with a passionate interest, and learned the Milicete Indian names for the animals. (Dr. Long always called a bear Mooween; he always called a chickadee Châgeegee-lokh-sis. This device stimulated me greatly, but if I remember right, it annoyed Theodore Roosevelt, who was also interested in nature.) I must have read the raccoon story twenty times. In those days, my imagination was immensely stirred by the thought of wildlife, of which I knew absolutely nothing but for which I felt a kind of awe. Today, after a good many years of tame life, I find myself in the incredibly rich situation of living in a steam-heated, electrically lit dwelling on a tarred highway with a raccoon dozing in her penthouse while my power lawn mower circles and growls noisily below. At last I am in a position to roll out the green carpet for a little sister to the bear. (I have even encountered Dr. Longâs daughter Lois in my travels, but it was not among raccoons that we met, and she seemed to have no mark of the Milicete Indian about her whatsoever, and never in my presence has she referred to a great horned owl as Kookooskoos, which saddens me.)
There are two sides to a raccoonâthe arboreal and the terrestrial. When a female coon is in the tree, caring for young, she is one thing. When she descends and steps off onto solid earth to prowl and hunt, she is quite another. In the tree she seems dainty and charming; the circles under her eyes make her look slightly dissipated and deserving of sympathy. The moment she hits the ground, all this changes; she seems predatory, sinister, and as close to evil as anything in Nature (which contains no evil) can be. If I were an Indian, naming animals, I would call the raccoon He Who Has the Perpetual Hangover. This morning, conditions inside the hole are probably unbearable. The kittens are quite big now, the sun is hot, and the hole is none too roomy anywayâitâs nothing but a flicker hole that time has enlarged. So she has emerged, to lie in full view on the horizontal limb just under her doorway. Three of her four legs are draped lifelessly over the limb, the fourth being held in reserve to hang on with. Her coat is rough, after the night of hunting. In this state she presents a picture of utter exhaustion and misery, unaccompanied by remorse. On the rare occasions when I have done a little hunting myself at night, we sleep it off together, she on her pallet, I on mine, and I take comfort in her nearness and in our common suffering.
I guess I have watched my coon descend the tree a hundred times; even so, I never miss a performance if I can help it. It has a ritualistic quality, and I know every motion, as a ballet enthusiast knows every motion of his favorite dance. The secret of its enchantment is the way it employs the failing light, so that when the descent begins, the performer is clearly visible and is a part of day, and when, ten or fifteen minutes later, the descent is complete and the coon removes the last paw from the tree and takes the first step away, groundborne, she is almost indecipherable and is a part of the shadows and the night. The going down of the sun and the going down of the coon are interrelated phenomena: a man is lucky indeed who lives where sunset and
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