{"id":17711,"date":"2014-05-20T17:07:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T17:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thewildbeat.com\/?p=17711"},"modified":"2020-08-02T22:54:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-02T22:54:33","slug":"postcards-from-a-freegan-raccoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/?p=17711","title":{"rendered":"Postcards from a Freegan Raccoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=””][fusion_text]<\/p>\n

If I had a photography motto it might be “follow the crows.” As sentries of the canopy, crows know what’s going on. So I pay attention. If it mattered at all to crows, they could tell me who shattered my car window last month and who stole our Christmas tree (with decorations) back in 1995.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0obviously does<\/em> interest crows is those\u00a0pesky\u00a0interlopers, especially during prime nesting season.\u00a0Around here, that\u00a0interloper is most often a Bald Eagle. But on this particular afternoon, I heard the crows calling out back where eagles don’t generally fly. It’s a private driveway for\u00a0an\u00a0apartment building. And it’s\u00a0also dotted with nesting trees for crows, jays and squirrels.\u00a0When I hear bird distress calls from that zone, I assume fledgling trouble.<\/p>\n

As I\u00a0pointed my lens, however, I saw the person of interest\u00a0for the crows — the cityscape’s original Freegan<\/a>,\u00a0Procyon\u00a0lotor:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

I love seeing raccoons in daylight, just to observe the behaviors\u00a0which normally evade us at night.\u00a0Contrary to popular mythology, seeing a raccoon in the daytime\u00a0does not mean they are rabid<\/a>. Raccoons can carry rabies, but animals with rabies\u00a0exhibit\u00a0other\u00a0symptoms. This time of year, we see raccoons\u00a0even more often in the afternoons as they forage, often to support a growing family of kits. Mother raccoons will look after their young for a year or so.<\/p>\n

You may or may not know that little kits purr — like cats. We learned this when we hand fed babies at our wildlife hospital. They chirp and screech a bit, too — they can be noisy. If you turn the volume up, you can hear the purring sound in this video from a wildlife rehabilitator.<\/a><\/p>\n

Raccoons raiding trash bins can bring out the worst in the human species. You can’t Google raccoon + trash without finding nasty posts — so don’t do it. I regret almost all of my wildlife Google searches. The truth is, we humans don’t secure our trash well and it’s only natural for an animal with the cleverness and dexterity of a raccoon to lift the lid and explore the worlds beyond. Wildcare in Marin<\/a>\u00a0has one of many pages\u00a0you can find on the web, with suggestions for [humanely] keeping raccoons out of trouble on your property.<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

The two things that most concern me with raccoons and trash are\u00a0the toxicity or danger\u00a0of items they encounter, and the possibility that young raccoons will accidentally trap themselves under the lid. If you hear sounds coming from a dumpster in the spring time, take a look. There are always cases of people finding baby animals in the trash. The little ones\u00a0simply don’t have the experience and size to get out\u00a0properly, especially if the dumpster is\u00a0empty and deep. Even this adult slipped a few\u00a0times, but was big enough and\u00a0skilled\u00a0enough to pull herself\u00a0back out. There are some very cute photos in\u00a0this article<\/a>\u00a0from the UK’s Daily Mail, about baby raccoons getting rescued\u00a0from dumpsters.<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

This raccoon\u00a0found a trash bag which, although you can’t tell here, was lilac and which I suspect (based on my unpleasant encounters\u00a0with lilac trash bags) might have been perfumed. The raccoon gave it a long whiff and tactile exam before tossing it to the ground.<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

After a few more looks under the lid, there was nothing more of interest for this raccoon. She trotted off, not at the 15mph she’s capable of, but in the casual amble of a local who knows her terrain … and\u00a0pays not much attention to the overhead crows.<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

I read an interesting piece in Wired<\/em>, about how some\u00a0species\u00a0exhibit adaptations to urban existence. Here’s a short excerpt from that article, How City Living is Reshaping the Brains and Behavior of Urban Animals<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As Snell-Rood and colleagues describe in an August 21 Proceedings of the Royal Society B article, museum specimens gathered across the 20th century show that Minnesota\u2019s urbanized small mammals \u2014 shrews and voles, bats and squirrels, mice and gophers \u2014 experienced a jump in brain size compared to rural mammals<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Snell-Rood thinks this might reflect the cognitive demands of adjusting to changing food sources, threats, and landscapes. \u201cBeing highly cognitive might give some animals a push, so they can deal with these new environments,\u201d she said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brain size is, to be sure, a very rough metric, one that\u2019s been discredited as a measure of raw intelligence in humans. For it to fluctuate across a whole suite of species, though, especially when other parts of their anatomy didn\u2019t change, at least hints thatsomething cognitive was going on.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The conclusion isn’t quite that urban animals have larger cranial capacity over time, but it’s\u00a0worth a read for this discussion.<\/p>\n

[\/fusion_text][\/fusion_builder_column][\/fusion_builder_row][\/fusion_builder_container]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=””][fusion_text] If I had a photography motto it might be “follow the crows.” As sentries of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1060,151],"tags":[93,488,157],"class_list":["post-17711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wildbeat","category-mammals","tag-feeding","tag-raccoons","tag-urban-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingridtaylar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}