The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon
nautil.us
nautil.us
I wonder if part of this could be due to differences between city and rural attitudes toward killing cute animals?
In cities, we tend to try to deal with a raccoon getting into our stuff by replacing the container with something harder for the raccoon to open, or moving it somewhere else. We try to stop the animal without harming it, even if this inconveniences us. If it is particularly troublesome, we try to trap it without harming it, and relocate it. It takes a lot to get us to go all the way to the kill it option.
In rural areas, we are much more likely to go straight from "there's a raccoon messing with my stuff" to "kill it".
The other thing is, my own anecdotal experience contrasts with your own anecdotal experience. (For what that's worth, which isn't much, I admit.)
I've lived in big cities almost all my life and people around me have killed or otherwise sought to harm raccoons on numerous occasions. They're thought of as pest, and in cities, pests abound unless you do drastic things. I've heard raccoons killed outside my window, I've seen bunnies dead from being fed rat poison, etc. In big cities. There's the pests angle, but there's also a fear of animals that seems to be associated with a lack of familiarity with and experience around animals that rural settings are more conducive to having.
By contrast, the years I spent living in rural places I encountered much more sensible attitudes towards things like raccoons. I found that people who live somewhere that leaves one more aware of one's place in nature have more respect for it.
Of course, there were numerous exceptions to both dynamics. And again, just my experience, but I think the notion that city-dwellers are somehow friendlier to nature is a too-easy misconception that's fueled mostly by the us-vs.-them narrative that's being pushed on us by politicians and the media alike. Country-dwellers hate nature! City-dwellers love nature! It's just too easy, too lacking nuance.
And then there's the whole problem to get around of cities being the most subdued nature there is: pouring concrete and asphalt over a large piece of nature and then claiming some kind of moral authority is a difficult concept for me. Manhattan used to be populated by the Lenape...
I know that per-capita you could make a strong case that cities have lower impact per capita, but something about that just doesn't feel sufficient to me.
For instance, rural raccoons are far more likely than city raccoons to have people in their territory that are keeping chickens for meat and/or eggs. This gives rural raccoons an opportunity to do more damage than their city cousins, and so also increases the chances they will draw a severe response.
Rural people also have more options for lethal force. Raccoons have been bothering your chickens? Go out the next night with your shotgun and blow the raccoons away. Try that in a city to deal with a raccoon trying to get into your recycle bin and you are likely to soon have far bigger problems than the raccoons.
Cities are also more likely to require permits or licenses to kill or trap an animal.
People with cats, on the other hand, tend to just kill the thing that's threatening their cat.
And rural settings have a more endless supply of threats. Yeah, you could go out every single night with your raccoon, or you could put up an electric fence.
Also, not one of the cases I've seen in the city sought permits to trap or kill. When you live somewhere where there are murders, who gives a crap about an animal?
I think we're both right, honestly, but I think the city situation is far more complicated-and far less raccoon-friendly–than you think. But I get where you're coming from.
I don't mean to play up the "pit bulls are tough" trope, but damn that's the only dog I've seen walk away from a 'coon with only a few scratches, no trip to the vet. It was the raccoon's lucky day, too, as he scampered off to tell his friends. I'm serious, that's what the raccoon did, because we haven't seen a raccoon in the neighborhood three years since.
The raccoon is smarter than I am. I'm considering moving.