Night visitors
Categories: animals, urban wildlifePosted on March 19th, 2007 | 2 Comments | RSS feed
A couple nights ago, I was just falling asleep when I was startled into alertness by a racket on the roof above my head. My first fear was that the rats had returned to my attic, but judging by the sound, these would have been REALLY BIG rats! This morning, our garbage can was over-turned, garbage was strewn over the grass, and my daughter discovered raccoon paw prints in the silt at the bottom of a bucket filled with rain water, which was sitting close to the garbage can. Mystery of the night visitors solved. We had inadvertantly set up the perfect raccoon dinner stop: garbage can buffet and right beside it, a place to wash the food.
Here’s a photo of a raccoon climbing up my back porch a couple years ago.
March 19th, 2007 at 7:18 am
In Japan racoons are called “arai guma”, which means “washing bears”. They are called this because of the way they sometimes wash their food before eating it.
Racoons are not native to Japan. They are an alien species. Some time in the 70’s there was a cartoon racoon in an anime on TV. People thought that it was so cute the way the cartoon racoon washed it’s food that pet shops started importing live racoons and they became pets. Of course, a live racoon is different from a cartoon racoon and soon people were dumping their pet racoons in the wild, where they have since established themselves.
Recently, I watched a Japanese TV show that featured a tarento (mildly talented celebrity) and the hilarious situations she gets into with a pet beaver. She kept it in her house. She walked it on a leash to the supermarket, where it demolished the plants in the nursery section. She took it to a park and it swam around in a pool. She sang to it. It was very, very cute. I am sure, that one of these days I will see a pet beaver for sale in my local pet shop.
Oyasuminasai
March 24th, 2007 at 5:29 am
I really hope that doesn’t happen!