sweasel.com

It’s sorta interesting when like, all the blogs you’re reading sort of synthesize. It’s almost like an interdisciplinary program at college. What am I babbling about?

This
http://ombudsben.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/our-coonhounds/
and this
http://drpepperisgoodforthesoul.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/martini-time/

I hafta make another comment about a dramatic raccoon encounter, one sec.

Ugh, last comment went in moderation queu. Does this mean no more gleeful genitalia comments?

Anyway, raccoons. Five years ago I was driving at night on a really quiet back-road and this bugger was standing up right in the center of the lane, staring down my headlights. I saw him too late and hit.

I felt horrible about it, and looped around up on the highway to come back to the spot, see if he was dead. This still makes me sad: He wasn’t alone. Another raccoon was lying prostrate over his body, just like a widow doubled over in grief flinging herself across the deceased’s body. She or he looked up finally, my car was at a stop, headlights on them both, and then I watched while the living racoon took a limb and literally dragged the body out of the road. No small feat, he was a big one. A couple cars came up behind me, one guy got out of his car to see if I was in trouble, and he also watched the racoon drag the other into the bushes. I waited until they were out of the roadway, and then drove home with the burden of guilt any motorist who has gone and run over a pedestrian might feel.

Sorry. I kicked it loose. It automatically quarantines posts with more than one link, since multiple links are typical of spam. I keep getting myself quarantined on other sites for that.

That’s an amazing story. Funny, I never thought about how raccoons live in the wild; I have no idea what their intepersonal relationships are like. Whether they form attachments or anything.

One of the spookiest things I ever saw was similar. I was headed to my car one morning in a steady, soaking rain. I spotted a familiar neighborhood cat standing in the yard next door, dripping wet. Just standing there with the water rolling off of her. That was so odd, I walked over to her, and she reluctantly backed away (she never lets me approach her; she may be feral).

She’d been staring at the body of a big orange tom, dead in the grass. There wasn’t a mark on him. He’d probably been hit a glancing blow with a car and managed to stagger over to die.

I try not to romanticize animals too much; it did occur to me that she might have been eating him, desperate as she may be for food. But no, indications are that she stood there contemplating, in a driving rain. (I’ve always meant to draw a picture of that memory, by way of exorcising it).

Again, I try not to anthropomorphize animals, but it’s clear they have some concept of death.

Yeah, I looked up on the internet and ‘the experts’ say there are no lasting pair bonds between raccoons, although sibling and mother/young bonds can be intense. The impression of grief was strong. It’s hard not to see things through a human lens, but I think that people tend to assign emotional responses to human interaction too exclusively. Human beings certainly don’t corner the market on fear and pain. Grief might be a more complex emotional response but if a dog can die of separation from it’s beloved master, I think the assignment of grief as a purely human emotion must be an error.

The above posts remind me of the data on elephants. They apparently have an extremely strong and long-lived bond between each other, and mourn the passing of a herd member repeatedly for years – whenever they are in the vacinity of the lost members’ remains/bones or where the loss occurred. Likewise, Hippos appear to have serious awareness of mortality, and mourning-like behavior has been recorded several times.

Some bird species have also been observed to display mourning behavior for a mate or offspring.

It isn’t unique to us humans by a long shot.

There’s a famous 30 seconds of film out there that this made me think of. A bull elephant walks along, spots an elephant skull on the ground and rears up in shock. His reaction is instant and powerful; it’s obvious he knows exactly what he’s looking at. I know I’ve seen it online, but YouTube wouldn’t cough it up for me.

YouTube is rude.

BTW: Are you related to A. Weasel?

http://aweaselslife.blogspot.com/

I’m not. But if it’s the same A. Weasel from Ace’s place, I’ve bumped into him before.

Weasels. They’re everywhere.

Yeah – AoS is where I found the link. His posts were kinda-similar enough to (my perception of) your attitudes and style that I suspected that perhaps you-all were related.

And, as usual, I was dead wrong.

I bet that raccoon would go for Gracie over on page three. And, while he’s well mannered and groomed, he’s a bandit and thus would be exciting for a girl. Or weasel. What have you.

A very long time ago when I had the chance as a 20 year old kid to bum around the country a bit, I lived on the Hudson river in upstate NY, way up where it is a clear, clean glacial stream. (Clear and clean not usually associated with the Hudson then.)

I took the garbage out one night, lifted the lid and looked down at a raccoon bandit mask with the most wide-set eyes I’d ever seen on a wild animal that close to my crotch.

In a rare spurt of quick thinking (if you knew me, you’d know how rare) I slammed the lid right back down, and backed away from the can.

You know how fisher-folk exaggerate the size of the one that got away? In my memory that coon’s eyes were so wide apart his head barely fit inside the trashcan.

It wasn’t until I got back inside rummaging around for available weaponry that I marveled at how the clever sumbitch had lifted the lid, scampered inside and let it back down as cover, then enjoyed a leisurely clandestine repast.

Anything that big and that smart is serious trouble. Ever since, when I take out the garbage, I knock first.

Does anyone else think that Washbears is just a cool name for Raccoon? Germans are great sometimes with names. Sometimes they are just goofy. Washing machine is like 87 letters. Automaticmachineforwashingclothes or some such.

I was blown away that Waschbären sounds so much like wash bears. I knew a Russian woman once who said English and German sounded so alike to her that she was surprised we didn’t automatically understand each other’s languages. That shocked me, because I would’ve said Russian and German sounded alike. Not the words so much, but all the hocking and spitting you have to do.