Doesn't this racoon look cute? And it probably is, right up until the point where you get up close and it suddenly decides to rip your arm off.¹ This is one of the fauna of the Honey Island swamp in Louisiana, and was plainly quite used to tourist boats wandering by. I imagine food is frequently thrown their way by the boat captains.
¹Or run away, which I suppose is more likely.
It has long been remarked that an exceptionally long run of doubled letters is found in the phrase "raccoon nook keeper". Don't let it be forgotten.
Ah, a family of them got into my father's truck, found a gallon of fresh maple syrup and covered the inside of the truck. Not a happy event.
For your father maybe . . .
And his truck...
Charlie had a nose job!!!
No, ripping your arm off is exactly what these evil things are thinking about,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKTJ4OrC60E
When I lived in Santa Cruz I was adjacent to a brushy and forested area (can't really call it wild) that harbored a lot of raccoons. Those suckers would come up at night and try and sneak in through the cat door before I went to sleep in eat my kitty's food. I sat in the living room typically with a couple of empty propane cylinders and would toss them at the fuckers. Eventually they learned not to come in.
what about the wild boar in the area next to the racoon.
Ranger Rick would never rip your arm off! https://rangerrick.org/
Adorable.
And they have families and communities... Some are bandits, others aren't.
When we moved in, the matriarch would always warn her kits from bothering with houses. It was cute and nice. Her kit liked to steal our mushrooms.
A couple generations later, family was living in the big redwood and a kit fell down while sleeping. It was so sad, his siblings spent hours searching for him ;-;
Note: If you see a raccoon out during the day, at least in the 'burbs, it's probably rabid.
...Or it fell out of a tree or got kicked out of its hidey-hole or is late coming home.
They can be aggressive. My neighbor leaves food out for cats and raccoons come at night. Once I let my 100 pound German Shepherd out while they were walking on the top of our shared fence and not only did they not run away, but one jumped down into my yard to confront my dog. I had to hose it to get it to run and then hose the others off the fence. Their claws are several inches long and I found scratches on my dog.
The Trash Panda knows two things: the world is garbage and the world is delicious.
Didn't Monty Python teach us that the bunny rabbit is the real threat?
Only if you are not possessed of the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch…