bloodteethandflame

Last Friday, I was out shopping for a birthday gift for a friend who collects Squishmallows.

Though I did not find the particular one that she had been searching for, I was able to locate a few smaller ones that suited the occasion, so I purchased two of them for her along with one for myself.

This raccoon:

So I went home, wrapped the gift, and didn’t give Squishmallows – or raccoons – another thought.

Until the next morning, when I let out my two dogs outside to pee and saw something in the far corner of my yard by my neighbor’s fence.

At first, I thought that it was nothing more than a bundle of sticks, but as I stepped out to look more closely, it began to look like a pile of sticks intermixed with clumps of brownish lint.

Odd.

And then, the scent of whatever it was hit my nostrils, and I realized that his clump of sticks and lint was a dead raccoon.

A long dead raccoon, by the looks of it, and I understood why I’d thought that it was a bundle of sticks at first glance, as I could see where its broken shoulder blade and ribs stuck out, pale against its fur.

I’d mowed the lawn on Thursday and even weed-whacked along the fence-lines, so I couldn’t understand how I could have missed seeing it earlier, but it was definitely there now.

A dead raccoon with delicate little black paws, a black mask, brown eyes…

and yet its matted fur was a dark reddish brown.

I could especially see the fur of its tail ringed in black against this rusty red color

but it didn’t seem to be blood

as all of its fur was that brownish-red color wherever I assumed would’ve been grey.

(That surprised me — I mean, aren’t raccoons usually grey and black?)

It was as if the Universe had dropped this very stinky and very dead raccoon into my yard, saying: Hey. I heard you say that you liked raccoons. So here… have one!

(Though, come to think of it, it was more likely to have been a vulture*)

How odd that I was so recently thinking of raccoons, only to be gifted with a dead (but mostly intact) one dropped into my yard less than 12 hours later.

What a strange coincidence.

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*Long-time readers of this blog may recall that several years ago, vultures also used to drop dead possums into my yard.

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ETA:

Can raccoons be red?

As it turns out, they can.

According to this website (and a few others), raccoons’ fur is most commonly a mix of grey and black, but…

“[This] raccoon’s beautiful coat is caused by erythrism, a genetic condition that causes reddish pigmentation of the fur and skin. Erythrism in raccoons usually runs in families. It isn’t harmful and, other than making them more likely targets for fur trappers, erythrism doesn’t affect a raccoon’s life expectancy.”

Huh.