50 The Raccoon 



made. My belief is drawn from observation of a 

 few tame raccoons and of some others not so tame. 

 Water was put into a pan to the depth of about four 

 inches, then two or three small fish were dropped in. 

 When the pan was placed upon the floor, Jim, our 

 pet raccoon, was allowed to enter the room, and; as 

 usual, he at once began his tour of investigation^ 

 Jim soon discovered the pan. He was a young rac- 

 coon, and to my knowledge had never seen a fish 

 before, and had never even been mussel hunting. 

 Walking about the pan he watched the fishes very 

 carefully for a minute or more, but since no advan- 

 tage could be gained by this procedure, he sat down 

 and, putting one paw upon the edge of the pan, tried 

 to grab the fish with the other, but did not succeed. 

 This lack of success seemed only to spur him on 

 to greater enthusiasm; his next attempt being to 

 grasp a fish with both paws, but the fish slipped away; 

 then he used one paw as a scoop and triumphantly 

 landed a fish, which he at once devoured. Returning 

 for the second, he landed it in the same manner as 

 before. After this he always used this effective 

 method of angling. 



A few years later I had an opportunity to experi- 

 ment in the fishing way with another pet raccoon. 

 One of our neighbors caught an old raccoon, and 



