We were out walking a couple of nights ago. As we crossed one street, I realized there was a raccoon looking up at me. It was standing inside a storm drain. “There’s a raccoon,” I said in surprise.
Carol didn’t see it at first — you don’t necessarily expect to see a raccoon in a storm drain. It kept bobbing up and down: it would poke its head up above the grating, then duck down back under the grating, then back up, then down.
Carol said something like, “Hello, raccoon,” and gave it a wide berth. So did I. It was not a cute raccoon; it was a little creepy.
That’s actually fairly common, but it is bizarre when you first see it. We had a family in a drain near us in Minnesota, and we would always slow down when we came near to check it out.
Raccoons can be a bit creepy, it’s true. Also, they’re subject to rabies.
Will — We never saw this in New Bedford, though there were raccoons in the city. Maybe the raccoons in New Bedford were higher class.
Raccoons seem to like the storm drains around here. Admittedly the one that took me most aback was ambling by some building near the center of the Stanford campus in the middle of the day.
We had a mountain lion in downtown Palo Alto a few years back.
Oh no I thought it was cute. BUT I think of raccoons as deceptively cute due to my memories of rabid raccoon events around Concord, Mass.
Raccoons love storm drains here too (Indiana). And we have Very High Class Raccoons (VHCR). Just ask Owen. He knows all about VHCRs in storm drains…alas.