Yes, Procyon lotor is an omnivorous species. How omnivorous? Have a look at Rufus, described on the YouTube video like this:
This is Rufus, a young raccoon who found his way into my heart. And into my snacks.
Rufus, the omnivorous trick-or-treating raccoon
October 31, 2015 • 2:15 pm
Looks like a youngster. Very cute but not a good idea to feed like this. When this guy grows up a little more he will start breaking into the house, and the neighbor’s, to help himself. And he might get a bit nasty if disturbed in his foraging.
When my sons were young teens,pre-pubescent and toddlers,(I had 6 boys), we had friends who were moving back to England who had a pet raccoon, for which they needed to find a good home. We went to their home to check out the raccoon. While there our friends fed this critter some chicken legs to demonstrate for us how easy it was to feed the beast. The good home they were looking for was not going to ours. The way that raccoon cracked and devoured those chicken legs scared my wife and me, and we gathered our 6 boys and said – thanks but no thanks. We would prefer our boys to retain all their fingers.
Great video. He’s like the Anti-Tigger (the excitable character in Winnie the Pooh who claimed to like everything comestible, but turned out to hate pretty much everything).
Every so often, I would forget to close the kitty door from the garage to the laundry room at night. In the Spring, I would wake up to a lot of noise – and sure enough, baby raccoons had slipped through the kitty door to feast on any left over cat food (the laundry room was closed for the night – so they could not get into the rest of the house or at the kitties). What was amusing was to turn on the light and watch as 5 or so raccoons all scrambling trying to get through the kitty door at the same time. It was hilarious.
Trash pandas. I never heard that before. That’s great.
Then there is always that, you know, rabies thingy…
And also the parasitic nematode Baylisascaris procyonis.
I do like me some Randy Newman music!
The guy feeding that raccoon might be in trouble with the health police – feeding the raccoon twinkies, cheerios, crackers… That critter sure has a taste for junk food!
Want a costume likely .not. to controversially appropriate a lot of offended humans — yet is utterly bloody and disgustingly frightening? Deliver buboes all over one’s flesh and scalp … … and go, if you can ambulate at all, as a bubonic plague – victim.
As of Yersinia pestis’ infamy of the y1300s and over most of Europe’s humans by way of infected flea – bites — as from so – infected raccoons onto humans and / or onto the favored Felidae and our other pets.
Now, today on Halloween y2015, from after when she was out on a hunting session onto and inside a (likely) recovering Oregon human — diagnosed last week. ”Since April 1, 2015, a total of 11 cases of human plague have been reported in residents of six states: Arizona (two), California (one), Colorado (four), Georgia (one), New Mexico (two), and Oregon (one). The two cases in Georgia and California residents have been linked to exposures at or near Yosemite National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Nine of the 11 patients were male; median age was 52 years (range = 14 – 79 years). Three patients aged 16, 52, and 79 years died.” Since this particular Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of August 2015, another American human has died thereof.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/506655026809170159
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6433a6.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/bubonic-plague-oregon.html (an increase in cases this year, seemingly)
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague
Blue