Tricksters

A few mornings ago I looked up from my desk and saw a raccoon hop up from the road onto the stretch of grass in front of my window. It was raining that day, and its fur was sodden. It walked right up to the house like it had important business by the Japanese quince and the linden. Then it disappeared. It was right near the house and I lost track of it. This is the magic of raccoons. They are shapeshifters. When they visit, they are here to teach you to be vigilant, or persistent, or clever in your dealings.There's a lot of folklore surrounding them. When we visited Japan I fell in love with the sensual depictions of tanuki. Tanuki are more of a cross of a fox and a raccoon. I prefer the cheerful and benevolent rogues they turned into to their original forms, which were said to possess humans and haunt them.The rogue tanuki is a partier, with a large belly and scrotum, and usually a bottle of sake at hand.

The animals around here have more business than I do, scribbling and dreaming at my desk. The owl knows when there's the business of a loose duck, the fox knows spring dusks by the pond are her best business hours, the deer keep a quiet business of traffic across the fields, stray cats have the business of frog and field mouse hunting, the rats keep a hippity hoppity duck feed business.

My business hours are 5 a.m. to about 4 p.m. now, when the light shifts into night. I crack open a can of corn, put on muck boots, a giant, black sweater that makes me look like an ominous wooly worm, and lead the duck parade to safety. The business of the raccoon, the weasel, the fox, the owl, thwarted once more by the cleverness of chicken wire, hardware cloth, and hope.

The Raccoon Whisperer, a retired veteran in Canada who feeds raccoons hot dogs, is raccoon and human business transaction at some of its best.