Raccoon 



compelled to go hungry, and, like the other hibernating beasts, they 

 lose flesh rapidly during the spring months, though the omnivo- 

 rous nature of their appetites gives them a decided advantage 

 over the woodchucks and the rest of the vegetable eaters in the 

 general scramble for food. 



It is curious that the quaint custom of washing meat ot all 

 kinds before eating it should be clung to so religiously by the 

 raccoons of all parts of the country. Raccoons are so easily 

 domesticated and prove such amusing pets that accounts of tame 

 coons are to be picked up almost anywhere, and although ex- 

 hibiting plenty of originality in most ways, they all seem to agree 

 in this one particular: that when meat is offered them it must 

 be thoroughly washed or else eaten only under protest appar- 

 ently, many a coon preferring to go hungry rather than eat flesh 

 which it has not first been allowed to wash. Moreover, they 

 are not willing to let any one else do the work for them, insist- 

 ing rather on being allowed to do it all themselves, holding their 

 food in both fore paws and sousing it about in the water until 

 it is reduced to a pallid, flabby, unappetizing mess which only a 

 coon could look upon without misgiving. 



The latin title lotor, as well as the names applied to this 

 species by both German and French naturalists, and I think by 

 some of the Indian tribes of this country, have reference to this 

 washing habit. 



The coon never has, and probably never will achieve, that 

 fame and popularity in the North which it holds in the South. 

 It undoubtedly owes the position which it holds there to the 

 peculiar mixture of insight and imagination with which the negro 

 observes the wild things about him, looking upon them as little 

 wild people dwelling in the woods and fields as best they may, 

 and hardly differing from his own race except as he himself 

 differs from the whites; the raccoon to them is "brother coon" 

 and the rabbit "brother rabbit." 



Before the war, the white children on the Southern planta- 

 tions obtained most of their knowledge of natural history from 

 the slaves, and although they received real facts and quaint negro 

 ideas and superstitions wonderfully blended, I am convinced that 

 with it all they got an appreciation of the true innerselves of 

 the little beasts not to be obtained from books or any amount 

 of the scientific research of the trained naturalists. 



253 



