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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

There's a Japanese anime from the '70s called something like "rascal the racoon", based on an American book, which tells the story of a kid with a pet raccoon.

I've wanted a pet raccoon since I saw this on TV in the '80s, and raccoons aren't even a thing in Europe :(

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And the anime was so popular it led to raccoons being imported en masse to Japan and becoming an invasive species when their owners released them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_the_Raccoon#Impact

I learned about this 2 years ago when a racoon showed up in Tokyo close to where I lived. [1]

wild to think they spread even all the way to Japan because of anime. and probably south Korea now. They banned raccoons in Japan but it seems to not have caught up in SK and there are a lot of racoon pet videos from SK on YouTube)

[1] https://youtu.be/P2yDY5HlUBw?si=YP_Bkd_oQZ86YOHt

There use to be "Raccoon cafes" in Seoul. You go buy a drink and pet the raccoons. IIRC animal cafes were banned around 2019 or so.

Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era. I had that book as a kid. There was a live action Disney film of it; didn't know about the anime version. Neat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_(book)

A generation of us grew up deeply coveting a pet coon, and have never given up on that dream, really...

The shocker for me was the bit about Rascal learning not to wash his sugarcubes before eating (or actually, to rinse once, because he was OCD about washing his food). Not that itself, although fascinating and charming; the idea that sugar was rationed to the author's family was mindblowing to juvenile me.

I haven't read the book but it seems that this was wartime rationing based on what I read about it on the wiki article?

Racoons are invading the north east of France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ijwZROb6g ; they are exotic invasive species: a female get 10 babies per year, and there is no predator

Aren't those the Asian/Japanese racoons (tanuki) rather than the American ones?

I recall watching a video about that many years ago when they had started appearing in eastern Europe.

Edit: looking at the video they do look like American ones tho

Yes, those are clearly American raccoons, not the Asian "raccoon dogs".

In the video it's mentioned they were unwillingly introduced by the US military, kept as pets by servicemen and escaped.

Well at least in Germany they are a thing - a quick google search says there's a population of >1 million raccoons in Germany.

Indeed, Germany has a Raccoon problem

https://youtu.be/eq3brUMm3gA

Can confirm. I was running through a forest in Berlin and saw a raccoon in a tree.

Was a little confused, but apparently quite a few around here.

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