It was a grey, drizzling day in East Toronto. Patches of morning mist still filled the recesses of the lawn in Kew Beach Park. Looming above the park’s east sidewalk and a set of benches, a large, rain-soaked tarp drooped down from over whatever timeless figure stood beneath it. The shrouded statue appeared to have been constructed in heroic proportions, standing more than two metres tall.
School groups, wildlife activists, elected officials and curious dog-walkers all huddled around the pedestal beneath their own patchwork of umbrellas, waiting for someone to start whatever was about to begin. A platform had been set up behind the crowd for media. Camera operators wiped their lenses of the misting rain, hoping the mayor would get the show going soon. Noah Kilgour, the head of Noah’s ARC (Association of Raccoon Conservation) was giving interviews to reporters off to the side.
“Well, we knew it was coming, of course,” he said. “Which makes it all the worse, doesn’t it? I mean, what kind of society are we that we stand by and watch an environmental catastrophe take place right on our doorsteps?”
A month earlier, the city had fallen into the excitement of a fresh sort of mourning. It was a Tuesday, 6:45 a.m., when the city’s last known raccoon, Conrad Jr., was found lying dead in the middle of Queen Street East in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. Kids walking to school pointed him out and suggested he must be sleeping. Relieved parents refrained from pointing out to their youngsters that raccoons likely didn’t sleep with all four of their legs reaching straight up to the heavens.
Disbelief spread through the city and across the country (thank you CBC) like a brushfire. Initially, there was outrage and demands for personal accountability. Footage of a shop’s security camera showed a garbage truck rolling over Conrad Jr. Then, activists and other commentators turned their sights on the system and demanded to know how all the efforts to keep Conrad Jr. safe had failed.
Long had Toronto been the meteorological punchline for the rest of Canada as it turtled beneath the weight of every 25-centimetre snow storm. Now it had become the target of international ridicule. Even South Africa issued a formal statement of condemnation at a session of the UN Environment Programme. Toronto’s last raccoon had become an international sensation shortly after the city’s wildlife department confirmed that Conrad Jr.’s only known sibling had disappeared, probably in the jaws of a coyote. There were no other reported sightings of raccoons left. There were live web cams positioned around his usual haunts for everyone to watch. Signs on lawns throughout the neighbourhood cautioned, “Go slow!! Conrad Jr. – and kids – cross here!!.”
‘How could this happen?’ people wondered. The question seemed somewhat rhetorical given everyone also seemed to have an opinion. Conservationists first cited the city’s introduction of raccoon-proof garbage bins in 2016. Locked out of the banquet of household detritus to which they had become accustomed, raccoon numbers started to taper off. But for residents battling to rid their chimneys, rotting roofs and decks of the chittering critters, there were still far too many of them. A couple living in Leaside then announced their four-year-old daughter had been bitten by a raccoon with distemper while playing in their backyard. Outrage flooded talk radio and neighbourhood Facebook groups. A little-known city councillor was swept into the mayor’s office in the next election on the single platform plank of reducing the number of raccoons. The hue and cry of wildlife conservationists and soft-hearted children were drowned out by a silent movement among homeowners trapping and ‘relocating’ nuisance raccoons as City Hall looked away. Davy Crockett coon-skinned caps became fashionable, particularly among teenaged boys.
The scales seemed tipped against the city’s trash pandas. Coyotes were enjoying a more welcoming environment within the city, and as their numbers grew, raccoon numbers dwindled further. For two long, hot summers, nights were filled with apocalyptic shrieks and howls as the outnumbered raccoons staged last-stand battles with opossums for territory. Experts blamed ultrasonic pest repellers for adding to the beleaguered raccoons’ stress and reducing their fertility.
Slowly, however, the tide of public sentiment began to turn. Raccoons may have been a pain, but they were at least cute, with their little burglar masks and striped tails. Even elderly men who had fought lifelong wars trying to keep raccoons out of their garbage bins had to admit that the infuriatingly clever bandits were a far sight better than the haunting opossums appearing with their paws and elongated snouts pressed up against their sliding patio doors.
That rewarming of sentiment grew into a white-hot crusade after a team of researchers from the University of Toronto successfully convinced the international scientific community that Toronto’s raccoons had become a distinct species from the common raccoon, or Procyon lotor. Part of the team’s argument was that repopulation attempts to mate the city raccoons with their country cousins failed entirely. The Procyon Torontus was an instant celebrity. School groups began painting up signs calling to ‘Save the Toronto Raccoon!’. Conservation groups launched fundraising campaigns for the newly discovered, instantly endangered species. Young men quickly scrubbed their dating apps of any photos of themselves donning a coon-skinned cap. The Toronto Maple Leafs unveiled a special-edition jersey with black and white stripes, promising a portion of sale proceeds to the Noah’s ARC Foundation.
The city began aggressively issuing fines to anyone found with baited animal traps. By then, however, raccoon sightings within the city were fleeting. The steady disappearance of families and small communities of remaining raccoons was dutifully logged until the only known group left was Conrad Jr.’s mother and siblings. The death of their mother, followed by each of Conrad Jr.’s siblings, sounded like a death knell as Toronto marched toward an extinction event.
Even so, Conrad’s death was met with disbelief, then anger, recrimination, regret and ultimately sorrow. The statue was seen as a final stage of acceptance within the community and a popular mantra to ‘do better’ for Toronto’s remaining urban wildlife – “except maybe the opossum,” the mayor would say in private conversation. Kids were joining junior ranger troops in hoards. Local and national conservation groups were raking in donations. Activists like Noah who had previously been dismissed by news show producers and reporters as doomsayers were basking in the limelight of daily media attention.
As the rain around the park began to lighten up, the mayor stepped up to the microphone alongside the statue and thanked everyone for coming. Conrad Jr., he explained, had been named after another Toronto raccoon who had previously gained a small taste of fame, albeit for a prolonged posthumous stretch of indignity lying neglected on a busy downtown street. Conrad Jr.s living exploits in East Toronto delighted children, young and old, the mayor said. He announced that, if reelected, he would create a new urban wildlife protection fund to ensure Toronto’s treasured black squirrels and Canada Geese did not suffer the same fate as its beloved raccoons. Noah offered a few personal memories of Conrad Jr. and delivered a pitch for his foundation and the protection of other urban wildlife. The statue’s sculptor offered a few words on the importance of casting Conrad Jr. as larger than life, standing nobly on his hinds to reflect raccoons’ kinship with their human neighbours. People nodded solemnly. Then, the speakers stepped toward the statue and pulled together on an overhanging rope. The crowd gasped and applauded as the tarp fell away. An oversized, gleaming bronze likeness of Conrad Jr. loomed above them. He stood on a podium shaped very much like the top of a green bin. One of Conrad Jr.’s child-like hands clutched the edge of a trash bag. His other paw reached out in an ambiguous gesture of either a greeting or a warning to ‘stay the hell back’. His slightly hunching posture created a heart-melting, hobo-like effect. Everyone applauded and cheered.
Once the clapping subsided and the mayor stepped off the stage, teachers started to gather their students for the trip back to classes. The mayor began shaking hands and accepting back pats for a job well done. Others had began to turn and disperse from the gathering when the sound of snapping branches broke out far overhead. Kids jumped and elderly folks from nearby retirement home grabbed their chests at the sound of a loud, slapping thump at the foot of Conrad Jr.’s statue. There before them, dropped straight out of the blue, was the miracle of a living specimen of Procyon Torontus with a peanut butter jar stuck on its head. Staggering to its feet, it careered through the crowd, shaking its head wildly. Within an hour or so, the discovery, trapping, and de-jarring of a female raccoon (pregnant no less!) was celebrated as the dawn of a new era for the Toronto Raccoon.
In the moment, however, the crowd stood in shocked silence and tried to compute the spectacle of a stumbling, jar-headed creature delivered like a forgotten order from an Amazon aerial drone. Kids cheered and did touchdown dances. The city’s parks director looked up at Conrad Jr., wondering if her branch would have to rename the statue in a few years’ time. Noah began to recalculate his fundraising targets in his head now that the plight of Toronto’s raccoons seemed to be revived, if only temporarily. The mayor stood silently and wondered if any of his poetic speech would still make the news.
There is a moment of immediate, emotional reflex that happens when something unexpected occurs. The face reacts instinctively before our brain can consciously vet it. It’s the snort of laughter we let out when a friend gets stung by a bee and does a funny dance. Our brain quickly tells us, ‘this is probably not the appropriate response,’ but not quite quick enough for our friend’s liking. Standing there mesmerized by the sight of a plastic-capped Lazarus, everyone — except the kids of course — scowled and thought the words that they had uttered so many times before: “Bloody raccoons… ruin everything.”