G.H.
He’d tucked his laptop under his arm and gone to the public library, to sit in the quiet and learn about the raccoon. An appealing course of action, sensible, logical, he thought—Right. I’m walking up a sidewalk, into a buildi ng, to find out about an animal. Though how else, not like I grew up somewhere out in the country—Nature was a Subject four weeks each summer at camp, you stayed on the path to be safe from poison ivy and got points for sticking little red flags by squirrel tracks.
But settling his jacket on the hard back of his chair, squaring his shoulders, opening his laptop, he recovers confidence of purpose. From premise to conclusion, from ignorance to knowledge to action: a methodical approach. What we need here’s a little knowledge.
I surmise, unfortunately, that in this case, as in others, Matthew will be unable to make methodical use of the information he obtains: unable, that is, through some defect in his vision or education, to site his structure on the broad firm plain of the essential, rather than among the unstable, multiform hills of fact. And should Matthew site his structure among those hills, he will lose sight of, or perhaps forget, what he needs to know. Become lost. On occasion, of course, a wandering survivor will rediscover those broad firm plains, even reach them in time. That is one possibility. But in this matter of the raccoon, for example? For example: Matthew has been unable to see beyond the particular fact of the animal in his house—is, in fact, beginning to lose sight of other facts, and of the valleys of connection between them.
Perhaps his sleeplessness is causing this change in vision; perhaps a friend could call out to him that he is getting lost. But no one has—I have not—at least not in a voice loud enough for him to hear.
So he reads that the raccoon (procyon lotor) is an extremely adaptable mammal whose fossils date from the lower Miocene, and which presently roams around wooded areas in a vast territory from the south of Canada across most of the United States, to South America. It does not inhabit the northern Rockies, nor the Great Basin’s more arid districts.
That the raccoon’s salt-and-pepper fur is of excellent quality. That the sexes are superficially alike in appearance: rather pudgy, short-legged and bushy-tailed; but with their small, mobile, and nicely-shaped muzzles and neatly erect ears, they nevertheless exude a certain charm. That among the raccoon’s more notable characteristics are its agile forepaws, whose separated and flexible digits allow it to manipulate objects with a dexterity resembling that of primates. That it walks, as do both bear and man, on the entire surfaces of its feet. That it possesses a fine, sharp nose, keen hearing, adequate vision. And is capable of a range of sounds, from the soft purr to the throaty growl.
That the raccoon does indeed wash, or dunk, its food, though none of the authorities Matthew consulted could provide more than speculative reasons for this behavior. That the animal customarily lives near lakes and streams and is adept at taking its food from the water, but will also eat nuts, birds, grain, eggs—almost anything else. That it is primarily though not exclusively nocturnal and most often makes its home (not, by and large, a very clean one) in a hollow tree, denning up for the duration of the colder weather. A homebody, it normally ranges less than a mile from its den.
It may live up to eighteen years in captivity.
The raccoon mates in the late winter and early spring of northern climes; some sixty three days after conceiving, when the air is balmy, the year green, the female bears her litter into the world. And while some writers call the animal monogamous, and others polygamous, a third group consider it a normally solitary creature, wandering the world alone when not breeding or rearing its young.
Indeed, it is on such subjects as the animal ‘s solitude—its personality, one might say—that Matthew unearthed the greatest differences of opinion. One naturalist described a captive raccoon as ‘nasty’for growling and snapping at him, and the animal’s fellow captives as “markedly indifferent”; on the very same page, however, he confessed that the animals played together for long stretches during their captivity. W. T. Hornaday took a less complicated view, commending the animal as a “cheerfully persistent”creature that no amount of hunting could discourage, or drive “from its favorite haunts”; he endorsed it as “one of the most satisfactory carnivorous pets that a boy can keep in confinement.” The Encyclopedia Brittanica’ s expert described it as wily, intelligent, inquisitive, methodical, elusive, expressive of face, and so very able to look out for its interests in the face of civilization “that it can get along nicely well within the limits of cities of considerable size.”
Indeed.
In yet another source Matthew read an entry on the savagery with which a cornered raccoon may fight. And noted a list of the raccoon’s adversaries—among them humans, who have hunted the animal for its valuable pelt and edible flesh.
Matthew read and read, following links and comparing sources, intoxicated by the hot scent of information. From a stack of books he culled references to relations between raccoon and man. Members of the old American Whig Party were styled “coons” for their portrayal of William Henry Harrison, their 1840 presidential candidate, as a simple honest farmer whose homespun virtues were suggested by the emblem of a log cabin with a coonskin nailed to its door. (Harrison, of course, won the campaign, but died soon after assuming office.) From the1840 campaign on, opponents derided Whig policies as “coonery.” “Coon” became, in the nineteenth-century United States, a slang term for any man, but particularly one who was sly and knowing.
And the expression, “gone coon,” came from a common tale, of which Matthew copied Frederick Marryat’s version:
A most famous American marksman, Captain Martin Scott of Vermont, went out one morning carrying his rifle, and eventually spotted a raccoon perched high in the branches of a tree. The captain raised his rifle, took aim—but then the raccoon politely raised his paw to signify a moment’s conference. When the captain lowered his rifle, the raccoon inquired if the man’s name was Scott.
“Yes it is,” replied the captain.”
“Martin Scott, Sir?”
“Yes, Martin Scott.”
“Would that be Captain Martin Scott?”
“Yes,” the captain said again, and raised his rifle, “it certainly would.”
“Ah,” said the raccoon sadly, and nodded. “I might as well come down then, for I’m a gone coon.”
Charles Dickens, according to Matthew’s notes, refers to this as the story of the “colonel” and “that sagacious animal in the United States.”
Other expressions: “To hunt the same old coon,” from the animal’s vaunted elusiveness as prey. “In a coon’s age,”from the animal ‘s alleged longevity. A “raccoon bridge,” a log thrown across a stream, celebrates the animal’s agility; “to coon” means to creep, clinging closely. “To go the whole coon” connotes determined indulgence or pursuit; the same qualities may be indicated in deeming “coon oysters” those which no other species will eat. “Coonhounds” are a breed developed in the southeastern United States, where hunting the animal has been a traditional pursuit; it was perhaps because raccoon hunting was widespread among southern black Americans, another writer noted, that in the nineteenth century “coon” first came to be used as a deeply derogatory term for them, a vicious bit of verbal trickery in which those who hunted down human beings saw fit to deride their victims with the name of the animal which those same victims hunted out of practical necessity.
Matthew’s last notes came from the Oxford English Dictionary, whose preferred spelling is “racoon.” (American dictionaries prefer “raccoon”. And as I suppose them to be the authorities here, the raccoon being native to this land, I cheerfully abide by their recommendation for this and other spellings.)
Matthew ‘s notes from the OED: Probable derivation is Powhaten (Virginia) Algonquin dialect, “aroughcoune’” or .”arathkone”, meaning—perhaps—“the scratcher.” French speakers in Canada call the raccoon· “raton laveur,” the little rat who washes. Raton also means pet or darling.
And here Matthew finishes typing, looks up to reflect on what he’s learnt, learns (by the clock on the wall) that it’s one thirty and he is late to meet Sarah. Damn. And they’re supposed to play tennis this afternoon, too. Have to come back another day.
He dons his windbreaker, thrusts his laptop beneath his arm as he races for his car.
What can Matthew build, then, with this scribbled heap of information? Probably nothing, for the heap is too lumpily various to allow of comfortable summations or stable conclusions; for the complex raccoon no simple defining phrase—no “dirty rat” or “sly fox” exists. No. What Matthew has found here is a most peculiar animal, one about which naturalists edgily disagree; the very spelling of the animal’s name, indeed, is open to honest debate. This is an animal that farmers guard against as a destroyer of crops and poultry, even of buildings, so unrelenting is it when it has settled on a territory. An animal of senses so acute it can find an earthworm buried in the ground. But yet is the same animal so elusive when pursued that men have troubled themselves to breed a dog to hunt it, merely in the hope of staying even with it, as it were, on the chase. An animal related to the bear, one said to make a “sweet sight” in the wild and a fine pet is also, somehow, the same animal that is perfectly capable of turning viciously on an adversary and drowning it in the nearest stream.
Oh yes. An animal that has come down to us in literary portraits as a being, even in Uncle Remus’s telling, of considerable wit and charm, a sort of urbane, fastidious nightthief. Confident and pleasantly self-depreciating, determined yet calmly fatalistic. On occasion dangerous.
next, 27 September, cont’d.
previous, Sarah’s Journal
The Nature of Things 