• GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    I’m reminded of the movie Long Way North where a heavily-accented sailor tells a girl about a dog that lives on the ship: “He is punished. He chews the rigging and steals.”

  • jjmoldy@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    The only close interaction I’ve ever had with a raccoon was when one perched on a fence post and was hissing and swiping at my dog, who was going apeshit. So yeah I can see how someone might confuse them for weird cats.

  • malloc@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Probably fake story but it’s more likely to domesticate an opossum over a raccoon. Maybe story over the decades changed the animal because human story telling results in many fabrications and hallucination of details.

    Adult raccoons are vicious and territorial cunts. Well at least the one I encountered anyways

    • clif@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I’ve got family that is on their third pet raccoon. I’m not sure where the last two came from but the first was a baby when they got it. They cut down a tree that had a family of raccoons in it and that one survived so they just… Kept it.

      It was very entertaining but could be an asshole when in heat.

      O, and I worked with a lady that had one too. Apparently they can survive a massive opiate overdose because it ate an entire bottle of painkillers (oxys? Hydros? I forget) while she was at work one day. She said it was stiff like rigor mortis for about 36 hours then eventually just got up and continued on like nothing had happened.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      my dad had two families of them visit him daily. he got them to do simple tricks for food and they would tap his leg to wake him up when he was asleep on the porch. as long as each family showed up at different times they were peaceful but they would otherwise fight amd one also killed and presumably ate a squirrel.