Peacock runs away from zoo workers in the Vale of Cashmere

Two peacocks broke out of the Prospect Park Zoo overnight and explored Brooklyn’s biggest park, setting off a footchase and spectacle that led them across busy Flatbush Avenue and into the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Zoo workers said the naughty peacocks had just been given the chance to go free range at the zoo, which had been keeping them penned up in the smallish aviary. Also, it’s breeding season, so the males are showing off and looking for ladies.

The morning census showed two (male) of the nine peacocks were missing. Someone called in after spotting them in the park. Around 9:30 crowds gathered around to see one peacock in a tree on the Long Meadow and one in a tree by the natural play area. People stayed back, especially if they had dogs.

One peacock flew over cyclists and runners to the play area, where children were delighted. Oddly, other birds paid no attention. No blue jays or crows mobbed them. The zoo workers didn’t have any special equipment, thinking that it would be easy to catch the birds once they were on the ground.

Nope.

Once one bird flew, it walked into the Vale of Cashmere. Only fitting the ostentatious bird would be drawn to the fanciest part of the park. Two workers tried to pen in the peacock with their jackets. He got away.

At some point I ended up face to face with a peacock on a path. I stopped, not wanting to move him further. But then a zoo worker came and he was on the run again. I got worried because it was just one worker following the bird on foot, heading down a path that would cross the out-of-control cyclists on East Drive. So I tried to head him off, but he turned another way anyway. Two workers almost caught him near a fence, but again that peacock was too fast. And they had no net.

I worried he would end up in traffic at Grand Army Plaza, but then I saw people excitedly taking pictures and pointing at trees across Flatbush Avenue in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. And this wasn’t just the usual crowd of serious birders, who were out in force for warbler migration, but, as usual, pretty much unmoved by a big fun bird.  Zoo workers saw them in the garden, too, so I assume the chase continues.

The birds should be fine–so long as they stay away from traffic, cats and dogs. A few roam around by St. John the Divine and do just fine.

You’ll definitely be hearing more about both crowdfunding and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs, better known as drones) to help wildlife.

Crowdfunding–where somebody asks the public to fund a project that isn’t likely to get big money elsewhere–is better known for art and design projects that use kickstarter. But Kickstarter has all kinds of rules: the project has to be art and can’t be for a charity. So Ol  Pejeta went to another  crowd-funding site Indegogo. Ol Pejeta has raised about $27,000 (as of Jan. 7) out of $35,000. It’s like the Obama campaign strategy: the donations are small, but there are a lot of them.

They want to buy a custom drone, which will pick up the rhinos’ GPS locations via RFD chips and livestream the video, allowing the 120 local armed guards to patrol the 140 square miles much more efficiently.

Everyone is a little confused about how many northern white rhinos survive in the wild, largely because of the horrific epidemic of poaching Africa has seen. Since 2006, no one has seen the herd (or crash) of rhino that used to wallow in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Southern Sudan might have some,  but biologists are too scared to check.

Biologists are also arguing over whether they are really all that different from the southern version. It’s the lumpers v. splitters argument: should slightly different, geographically separated, animals be lumped together or split into separate species. In 2010 Australian archeologist Colin Groves argued they are totally different species because of their genes, tooth size and angle and skull growth.

But not everybody is so sure. The IUCN Red List says it is undecided on whether to separate the northern white or lump it with the southern and expects more research to rebut Groves.

Either way, these rhinos aren’t from Kenya, which hasn’t had rhinos in the last 200 years, the IUCN says. Rhino specialists just picked Ol Pejeta Conservancy as the rhino’s last, best chance. The rhinos wouldn’t have survived if they weren’t in the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic.

If these rhinos aren’t the most rare kind of rhino, then they are the least rare. About 20,000 southern white rhinos lived in 2010, according to Some rhino specialists think it’s just too late for the northern white rhinos anyway, since the four known survivors would have to interbreed  too much to recreate a stable population. Aside from the white rhinos, there are four species of rhino left–three (Sumatran, Black, Javan) are critically endangered and one (Indian) is vulnerable.

So these four individuals at Ol Pejeta are either the rarest of all rhino species–or just a handful of the most populous rhino species left (which itself was saved from extinction in the last century).

Help out Ol Pejeta on Indegogo

Where to see animals in Africa

Nevermind the horrific death of a trainer in 2010 by killer whale Tilikum. Or the various other attacks and deaths. Forget about concerns about how many animals SeaWorld takes from the wild and the growing consensus

Orca at SeaWorld, courtesy of Roger Wollstadt

that marine mammals shouldn’t be captive entertainers. Don’t think about how SeaWorld uses Tilikum as the star of its breeding program. Pay no attention to the massive amount of debt the company is in, thanks to the Blackstone Group, the huge private equity firm that bought the chain of 11 amusement parks for $2.7 billion from Anheuser-Busch in 2009, in a classic leveraged buyout that has left the company drowning in debt.

Blackstone now wants the investing public to take over some of the responsibility of SeaWorld, even as it maintains control.

Blackstone just filed the documentation necessary to sell shares in SeaWorld Entertainment during the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s, so the amount it hopes to raise is unclear so far, though Bloomberg reports it plans to raise at least $500 million. It’ll be a few months before we know exactly, but the financial details contained in its registration form with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal a number of fascinating details about Sea World and how it operates that any animal lover should know.

SeaWorld is deep in debt, but its current owners are paying themselves amazingly well

The SeaWorld – Blackstone story is a classic leveraged buy-out tale of sophisticated investors buying a company, loading it up with debt and using it as a cash machine. Blackstone put up about $1 million of its own money to buy SeaWorld, then put the company $1.3 billion in debt, the Orlando-Sentinel reported at the time of the deal. Now the company is $1.8 billion in debt, thanks to the lavish $610.1 million dividends paid in the last two years.

Blackstone did make the company profitable, but nowhere near that much. In 2011, SeaWorld earned $19.1 million but paid Blackstone a $110.1 million dividend. For the first nine months of 2012, SeaWorld paid Blackstone a $500 million dividend–pretty amazing considering the net income was only $86 million. (Coincidentally the same amount it paid in interest on its loans.) “Blackstone extracts another dividend from SeaWorld” is how  The Deal explained it. Writer David Holley noted that S&P downgraded the company’s debt and Moody’s raised its probability that it would default on its loans.

The question this raises for animal lovers is how it will impact the treatment of SeaWorld’s 67,000 animals. That’s always an issue when you put animals to work for a for-profit enterprise. It’s hard to imagine how being over-leveraged will improve the lives of the animals there.

What you’re buying if you buy Sea World shares

Blackstone lists Sea World Entertainment’s total capitalization at $2.3 billion. That’s not what is being sold to the public; Blackstone wants to keep control of the company, but use the public sale of shares to get cash from the public, in part, to pay off a loan that carries 11% interest. So if you’re buying Sea World shares, you won’t really have much say in how the company is run, but you will help its principal owner, Blackstone, pay down high-interest debt.

Other fun facts from the filing:

Nearly 1 in 5 of their marine mammals was taken from the wild

The S-1 filing, as it’s known, reports that “More than 80% of our marine mammals were born in human care.” That means that almost 20% were pulled from the wild, in places like Taiji, Japan, where the movie The Cove documented dolphin slaughter. The film argues that the fishermen don’t make that much money off dolphin meat, but persist because they can occasionally sell a dolphin to an aquarium for about $28,000. A trained dolphin can be sold for $300,000.

Sea World has 67,000 animals

The company boasts that it has 60,000 fish and 7,000 “marine and terrestrial animals.” Remember, Sea World Entertainment includes the animal parks Busch Gardens, which have about 2,700 animals, ranging from lemurs to flamingoes and elephants. Sea World reports that it possesses 29 killer whales, 151 dolphins, and 115 sea lions.

Sea World considers its breeding program an asset

The financial document calls it “successful and innovative,” and notes their genetic diversity. This is odd because Sea World has been criticized for overusing their most dangerous killer whale, Tilikum, to father too many offspring. Drummer and PETA rep Tommy Lee complained publicly that even though they claim Tilikum won’t have any contact with trainers, somebody is still going to have to touch him intimately to extract more sperm.

Sea World is not too worried about fines from regulators

SeaWorld has to list potential risks to investors. It names animal welfare regulations, but doesn’t seem overly nervous. SeaWorld says say it follows the rules of animal care and even in “unusual instances when we are cited for an alleged deficiency, we are most often given the opportunity to correct any purported deficiencies without penalty.” And even if Sea World does have to pay a fine, it’s usually no big deal. “In the past, when we have been subjected to governmental claims for fines, the amounts involved were not material [emphasis mine] to our business, financial condition or results of operations.”

Case in point: In June 2012, a judge ruled that SeaWorld has to make the workplace safer for trainers, but as lawyer Edward Tan explained, the judge also reduced the fine from $75,000 to $12,000.

Sea World has insurance for when whales attack people 

While Sea World reassures investors that it runs a totally safe place, it has to acknowledge in the risks that could harm its business that “injuries or death, while rare, have occurred in the past and may occur in the future.”

To protect the bottom line, Sea World has a policy for “animal enterprise related businesses in the theme park industry.” That said, Sea World admits that it is worried about premiums going up. “We cannot predict the level of the premiums that we may be required to pay for subsequent insurance coverage, the level of any self-insurance retention applicable thereto, the level of aggregate coverage available, or the availability of coverage for specific risks.” In other words, whale attacks are part of the cost of doing business.

They help rescue more than 500 wild animals a year 

SeaWorld and the other parks do generously help some wildlife. They take in orphaned, injured, sick or abandoned wild animals. They don’t get anything in return; if the animals survive, SeaWorld returns them to the wild. In 40-plus years, they’ve treated more than 22,000 wild patients.

Of your $79 ticket, less than a dime goes to the conservation fund

The parks boast that they fund their own SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund.  Though, truth be told, not all that generously. The fund’s website says, “The parks have contributed more than $50 million to wildlife conservation since 1970.” If it were equally divided annually, that would amount to about $1.2 million a year. The company had sales of $1.2 billion for the first nine months of this year. So if you shell out the $79 for an adult ticket, you can feel good knowing roughly 6 – 8 cents of that is going to conservation.

Where to See Whales in the Wild

Narcisse snakes / Photo courtesy of Steve McCullough, stevemccullough.ca

How far would you drive or fly out of your way to see a bunch of snakes? In a roundup of the best travel possibilities for 2013, Lonely Planet editors picked the best 10 spots to see snakes around the world.
The Narcisse snake dens of Manitoba is their top pick. You may have seen this amazing spectacle on nature programs: in May tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes wake from hibernation, slither out of dens and mate in a writhing ball. This a destination snake spot, definitely not something you’ll pass on a roadtrip since it’s a couple hours north of Winnepeg.  But after the trek, it’s kind of tame. You can see these tiny snakes, often kept as pets, from the safety and convenience of a viewing platform.
Most of the other spots on Lonely Planet’s list are far more exotic cultural experiences, like a Hindu festival with cobras in India (though NPR says snake charmers are considered cruel and are fading fast from the scene), a temple for snakes in Benin, west Africa, and a snake pagoda in Myanmar.  A few are snake spots in name only, like the serpent mounds in Ohio, a mythical snake in Australia (but inexplicably, the list lacks Loch Ness, home to the planet’s favorite crpytozoological serpent).

While the list makes a fun read and may inspire some dreamy vacations, it could do with a few more natural locations, like the one they include in the Panatal, Brazil or Isla Pájaros in Costa Rica’s Palo Verde National Park, which has the largest concentration of boa constrictors.

To find spectacular snakes in the wilds of the U.S., head to Everglades National Park, which is the epicenter of the explosion of abandoned pythons not lucky enough to make it into one of the sanctuaries. They have so many, the state of Florida started a hunting season. If you go during a cold snap, you might find them stunned and sleepy.

Many of the big hot, dry parks out west have rattlesnakes, if that’s what you’re into. Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah notes that you may see them on  “Under-the-Rim Trail, Riggs Springs Loop, and the Fairyland Loop.”

For the United States, I would add a few good options for families and thrill seekers:

Snake Sanctuaries take in nonreleasable wildlife and forsaken pets, are a way to see snakes more intimately than a zoo and with less guilt about their captivity. Just as there are places that take in the wolves, big cats and monkeys some idiot thought would make an attention-getting pet, sanctuaries have sprung up to take in the unfortunate snakes that you might have once seen on some attention-seeker’s shoulders. Midgard Serpents Reptile Rescue & Sanctuary in North Carolina, the Colorado Reptile Humane Society, Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary,  Indiana Turtle Care, Inc., or VA Reptile Rescue. 

Lonely Planet wisely left out a couple of the most cruel and unseemly snake events, like the 3,000 year old Italian Cocullo Snake Festival, for which local non-poisonous snakes are rounded up and de-fanged and all of those Texas rattlesnake round-ups, which go down pretty much as you’d think.

But there are a few peculiarities of American culture that could have made the snake list. If you’re going to cultural attractions in India, you might be interested in a popular U.S. tourist destination that features snakes: South of the Border, the cheesy, ever-expanding roadside stop along Route 95. Better known for giant animal  statues, the place also has a real reptile house with an African black mamba.

And while you’re down south, maybe check out some Pentecostal snake-handling pastors. Now, I have no idea which is the most exciting or easiest to access as an outsider, but I’d love for Lonely Planet to find out by visiting La Follette, TN, or  Greenville, NC. If you’re going to see an incomprehensible religious spectacle that uses snakes as props, wouldn’t one in the U.S. be even scarier than those in India?

Lonely Planet mentions that this is the Chinese Year of the Snake, so I’d like more details about snake-themed festivities in Beijing for the New Year in February. But this is an excellent primer on where to see snakes.

More snake stories

Where to see Turtles or Weird Animals

A lone barnacle goose  (Branta leucopsis), who apparently took a wrong right turn from Greenland and ended up in Brooklyn, is charming lots of birders. But his fans don’t include the flock of Canada geese he’s glommed onto; they hiss and flap their wings at him.

Dozens of birders tried to get a glimpse or picture of the smallish, striped goose. I overheard chatter about him making their life list. He cruised between the peninsula and illicit duck-feeding area in the southwest corner of the lake.

I’m just assuming here it’s a young male–as so many wandering pioneers of many species are.

Yesterday he lost himself in the flock of Canada geese. Today he was by himself, then with a swan, then back with the flock. Though, in just twenty minutes I saw two birds try to drive him off. I don’t know if it was territorial or about the hierarchy within the group, but so far he doesn’t seem to be making friends.

He’s much smaller and prettier than the big Canadians. He has a teeny bill but eats the same leaves, roots and seeds that the lumbering Canadiennes do.

Barnacle Goose migration map. They don’t go that far. From Planet of Birds.

The Canada geese migrate much further south than barnacle geese. The ones you see on the east coast may also start in Greenland, but on the northwest coast, and migrate all the way down to the Carolinas–more than 2,000 miles. The Barnacle goose, however, is from the southeast coast of Greenland and flies about half that distance to Northern Ireland or Scotland. (Each species has many migration routes, stopping points that sometimes become permanent, birds that have decided to just stay in one place, geese that escaped from captivity and all kinds of complications).

Canada goose migration map, courtesy of City Birder and NE Game and Park Commission

The RSPB says there are only about 370,000 barnacle geese in the world, including roughly 100,000 that winter in the northern UK from Greenland and northern Russia.

He seemed thoroughly uninterested in the food being thrown by park goers. Maybe he’ll catch on and stick around. Otherwise,  he’s got a long trip ahead, flying into hunting season.

Read about the Greenland goose’s appearance

Where to SEE WEIRD BIRDS (All the interesting birds: pelicans, puffins, prairie chickens, vultures, hummingbirds)

Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis)

The Barnacle Goose migrates among many countries in northern Europe, with its biggest territory in Greenland and lots of little outposts in the UK, Russia and on cold islands you’ve never heard off, stretching all the way to Russia, according to a map from the IUCN Red List.

How big of a deal is this?

Peter, who runs Brooklyn Bird Club, noted in an email to a yahoo group that it’s probably the first ever seen in Prospect Park.

But people have posted sightings on ebird as far south as NC. Out on Montauk, people had a rash of sightings of a solitary Barnacle in 2006 and 2007. In 2010 one showed up at the other end of New York City, in Pelham Bay Park.

So, it’s not the first Barnacle Goose to end up on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but it’s still a pretty big deal.

	Where to SEE MOOSE
	Where to SEE WEIRD BIRDS (All the interesting birds: pelicans, puffins, prairie chickens, vultures, hummingbirds)

Here’s a much better picture.

beetle flips itself

I felt like such a conservation hero one day last week when I scooped up a freaky, huge black and white beetle off a sidewalk in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. For years the city (and any group involved in trees) has been handing out pictures of the invasive beetle that has been eating maple, horsechestnut, elm, willow, birch, poplar, and ash trees trees from the inside out.

I put the bug in a ziplock bag for further investigation at home. I looked him up compared to his WANTED poster.

Nope. I had found an Eyed click beetle (Alaus oculatus). Thankfully, Massachusetts seems to have encountered enough “helpful” people like me and come up with posters that explainthat other bugs are black and white, too. They list 10 look-alike species. The Eyed click may actually eat Asian longhorns; bugguide.net says “Larvae are predatory, eating grubs of wood-boring beetles like cerambycids (longhorns).”

An Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) would have been quite a find in Prospect Park, which seems not to be infested yet. Luckily, it was not one.

Find wildlife by species

Miserable bear and uncomfortable customer at Hachimantai Bear Park / Photo Courtesy of Little Akita WordPress

Two elderly women were mauled to death by bears who escaped concrete pens of a “bear farm” in northern Japan Friday. The specifics of a bear farm–animals are used both as cheap entertainment and for their gall bladders in traditional medicine–are unique to Asia. But these kind of escapes from private facilities are not. Too many of these sad places have horrific endings like the one we saw in Zanesville, OH.

The Hachimantai Bear Farm is one of two in Akita prefecture and eight in Japan, according to a 2002 report from the World Society for the Protection of Animals. Japan has a huge, totally unregulated market in bear gall bladder and some of the bear farms themselves sell it.

Yomuri Shinbun says that the farm opened in 1987 and has had a succession of seven owners and many complaints from animal groups about the animal’s living conditions.  They had 38 bears, mostly brown (grizzly) bears. There’s much confusion over how many were still in their concrete pens and how many escaped, but at least six were shot by local hunters after the incident.

Everyone originally thought that the bears escaped by climbing on piles snow. Mainichi quoted the 68-year-old operator of the park saying: “They may have climbed over the fence from there [a snow pile]…We used to remove the snow by pouring water onto it, but we were not aware that parts of it were still there.”  But Japan Times now says a cage door was open. And one of the women may have collapsed before she was attacked. Also note: the two dead workers were 76 and 69. If I lived near there, they probably wouldn’t be my first choice for the staff.

A blogger at Little Akita WordPress described visiting the place, then getting depressed about their miserable lives in concrete pens: “After seeing those bears which live there, I felt sorry for them… They should be able to live in nature. I got very sad watching the bears which did performances to get food.”

The bears would do tricks, like showing off their bear paws, to get food from tourists. This isn’t just a backwater, shameful sideshow. Mainichi Shinbun says that 7,000 people a year still visited. The Akita Tourism board mentions it. These creepy places keep in business because people keep going to them not realizing how easy, or at least possible, it is to see them in the wild.

Bears had to perform for food at the park

Where to SEE BEAR Polar, Grizzly, Black, any kind

SEE ANIMALS IN ASIA

	Cameron	Branson
Destination	Marianas Trench	Puerto Rico Trench
Depth	35,800 ft	28,373 ft
Craft	Deep Sea Challenger	DeepFlight Challenger
Material	foam	carbon fiber and titanium
Goal	visit the Mariana trench many times	reach depths of each ocean
Confidence in critters at great depths	“We’d all like to think there are giant squid and sea monsters down there,” he told the Times.	“We know there are gigantic things down there,” he told the Telegraph.
How vehicle moves	vertical, like a seahorse	with wings or flippers, like a dolphin

Luckily the world has more than one eco-minded, genius gazillionaire. Branson and his team hope to visit the Mariana, too, later this year in a different kind of craft. Branson himself will go down to the Puerto Rico trench. That’s the deepest spot in the Atlantic and is about 7,000 feet shallower.

Nobody is sure if anything could really survive that deep. It’s dark and that means not much plant life. It’s cold–and most creatures prefer the warm, shallow water like the mountainous waters that usually abut the sea trenches. Both land formations are formed by tectonic plates squishing and stretching the earth. And then there’s the incredible water pressure, which has made these explorations so difficult and dangerous.

Of course, we’re all hoping someone will find a whole herd of Loch Ness monsters down there. Or at minimum a giant squid. Certainly something better than the shrimp-like creatures Cameron got to see.

Branson is suitably enthusiastic, hoping his craft, which is bigger, can cruise and call in another sub to take pictures, will find something. He’s got a soft spot for fun creatures and has created a lemur haven, despite taking some slack from doubters.

The only other manned mission to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench was in 1960 when the U.S. Navy sent oceanographers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard down to the bottom. Near the bottom they saw a flatfish, but Walsh told ScienceFriday last week, biologists insist they really didn’t see it.

“Well, just before we landed, we spotted what we thought was a flatfish, a white flat – like a halibut or a sole, a foot long. And that was quite a sighting, if true, of a higher-order marine vertebrate in such – at such a great depth. And it was a bottom-dwelling type of fish, so it meant that it was where it belonged and that there was food down there and sufficient oxygen to support it. Now Jacques Piccard…and I were not ichthyologists. We were engineers. We were, if you would, test pilots of this vehicle trying to prove out its capability. So in the subsequent years, we’ve been advised by all kinds of scientists that we didn’t see that.”

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong?

The first crew never got a good look because they stirred up so much silt. Cameron had to head up early because of a technical problem. He hopes to return. His mission, backed by National Geographic, was always to get down there a few times.

Although the story of two rich geniuses racing in their private subs to the bottom of the ocean is delightful, really Branson didn’t plan to dive to the Mariana Trench himself.  His partner, Chris Welsh, is heading there (and, yes, the trip was delayed). Branson is going on the second of the five legs of the adventure, one for the bottom of each ocean. The Puerto Rico Trench is near a breeding ground for humpback whales (they like shallow, warm water) and plenty of other marine mammals and flying fish near the surface, NOAA has found.

The vessels are slightly different, but both plan on using little helper “lander” craft that go down first and drop bait. Welsh says on their blog: “The Virgin sub is excellent for large scale exploration and identifying areas worthy of more detailed examination, and Jim’s sub is perfect for detailed examination of those sites once found.”

For now let’s remember that not seeing something doesn’t prove it isn’t there. Animal tourists know to well that you can go to the exact location of a previous sighting and come up with nothing after a whole day of patient waiting. It’s as if human beings had only spent a few hours in Alaska and came back thinking it was just snow: it is mainly just snow, but there are also polar bears and walruses in certain parts. I’m just happy there are two gazillionaires willing to go looking for new creatures down there in the least explored place on earth.

Where to SEE WHALES

Read about Branson’s mission to save lemurs

SEE ANIMALS IN AUSTRALIA

Toronto Photo courtesy of Michael Gil

The city of Toronto is trying to brush off the title “Raccoon Capital of the World” that the PBS show Nature bestowed on it this week. I called the See Toronto 800-number and asked where animal tourists could see raccoons. The Toronto travel expert tried to dissuade me that they even have any. They clearly have seen the documentary “Raccoon Nation,” and don’t want to be known as some kind of planetary dumpster that draws masked nighttime scavengers.

“Actually we don’t have a raccoon infestation,” the operator tells me quickly. “I’ve lived in Toronto all my life but I’ve never seen a raccoon.”

Oh, they’ve seen the stories. The  documentary premiered on Canadian TV last year and highlights the York University research tracking urban raccoons, which shows they live 150 per square km–50 times the density of rural raccoons. Researchers found that, like human city dwellers, urban raccoons just get used to living in a smaller space and don’t stray outside it, even if there are green pastures nearby. They’re like Manhattanites with a mental barrier that keeps them from the attractions of Brooklyn and the suburbs.

Sadly, there is no official raccoon census to gauge whether Toronto deserves the title or just happened to get it because they have raccoon scientists. If you’ve ever walked in Central Park’s north woods at dusk you will be amazed how many raccoons just pop out of the trees.

Toronto doesn’t seem to like the attention. Search the tourism site and you’ll find no mention of raccoons. I asked the guide about the show and the title. “People like to use a lot of misnomers,” he says. I ask where I can see them when I come to Toronto. “Probably the suburbs.”

The documentary points out that Kassel, Germany, is the raccoon capital of Europe. They don’t mention that they are sometimes called “Nazi raccoons” because they were released with permission of Hitler pal Hermann Göring, who figured he could improve on the genetic diversity of German wildlife and make the forest more fun for hunters. Japan imported them as cute pets in the 70s. Guess how that worked out. They’re now turning ancient temples into dens. Russia also has a runaway raccoon population.

Toronto has some competition as the raccoon capital. Florida’s Hugh Taylor Birch State Park in Ft. Lauderdale had a documented population of 238 raccoons per km. Well, it did before people caught and moved them–though the park still notes that it’s a good place to see them. Out Walking the Dog has estimated the raccoon population of central Manhattan’s parks is north of 400. Odds are, someplace in the world has a greater density of raccoons than Toronto. If they want to shirk their title, they should try figuring out what that place is.

Where to SEE ODD LITTLE ANIMALS Coait, Prairie Dog, Otter, kangaroo, skunk, porcupine, salamander, snake, squid, pretty much anything rare

	SEE ANIMALS IN AUSTRALIA
	SEE ANIMALS IN CANADA