If you lived here you would be home by now.

Where the wild things are.

It would be wrong to say Mississauga is entirely devoid of life. Let me introduce you a creature unheard of in the UK, but very much present in Canada…

By Lexnger on Flickr, licenced under Creative Commons 2.0 by-nc

This is a raccoon, known formally as Procyon lotor.

(Procyon lotor sounds like one of Doctor Who’s adversaries, actually. The Procyon lotor stands on top of the Tardis, noisily tips it over with its weight so it bursts open, and then eats all the Doctor’s teabags and fruit rinds, causing him minor inconvenience when he wakes up the next morning. Steven Moffat? If you’re listening, this would make a great episode.)

When it isn’t travelling through space, a raccoon is a forest creature and an omnivore. Normally thought to be solitary, it does its best to avoid human contact. But as the humans cut down the forests and build cities on top, they take full advantage and thrive.

Yesterday, we had raccoons visit. This is what a raccoon managed to do to a neighbour’s food waste bin, after she left the door of her garage open:

What a mess.

There are two things to be said about this picture.

1. Somebody, not just the raccoon, really really likes watermelon.

2. According to Wikipedia, raccoons are normally thought to be colour-blind, except for the colour green. So why have the municipalities of both Toronto and Peel [1] decided to make the food waste bins green?

Of course, the raccoon itself has long fled the scene of the om nom nom. We knew it was a raccoon because when initially found the bin tipped over, we saw a masked face peeking out from behind another car, pretending to look innocent. We left, and it started ripping the bags up.

What’s the solution? Perhaps you should keep your car in one garage and your food waste bin in your other garage.

You could douse the bin with strong ammoniac smells. This is why raccoons always avoid Twickenham.

Or, the most popular solution: tune a radio to a talk station and put that next to your bin. Raccoons really don’t like the sound of human voices that much and tend to scarper whenever they hear people.

I speak for myself, but raccoons aren’t really disliked that much here. They occupy the same sort of position within human society as urban foxes (which also live in Mississauga) – a bit of an inconvenience sometimes, but not as long as you’re careful with your bins. And isn’t it nice to have a little bit of nature on your doorstep occasionally?

The real hated and feared wild animal around here is, of course, Mephitis mephitis, or the striped skunk.

I haven’t encountered a real-life skunk yet, but I’m sure amusement will ensue when I do.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that on my first ever trip to Canada five years ago, I snapped this extraordinary raccoon behaviour about three miles from Niagara Falls:

So here we have a raccoon, in broad daylight, eating something not thrown away, that seems to believe it’s in a petting zoo.

Perhaps this one worked out that if it looks cute and puts its paw on tourists’ knees, it will get even better, fresher food than its rummaging colleagues. It’s all about the evolutionary value of cuteness.

In short – raccoons are clever, and could probably beat you at Jenga, if you were playing on top of a bin.

Raccoon links

The Onion: Raccoon Leaders Call For Loosening of Garbage-Can Lids
Flash game: Raccoon Racing
Salon: The Raccoon Stories

More animal interlopers

Moose
Polar bears

[Any more? I saw something last week about a town taken over by herd of bison, but I can't find it at the moment...]

[1] Peel region is where Mississauga is situated. Peel is a super name for a place to hang out if you’re a raccoon. It would be like me living in a town called Cake. [back]