Cull of the Wild by Hugh Warwick;

Author:Hugh Warwick;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399403726
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK (Trade)
Published: 2024-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Raccoons

Most of my favourite writers are women. Each Christmas I gift myself a couple of non work-related books to read just for fun, and it is becoming one of my favourite parts of that season. 2021 I scored hits with Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay. Both brilliant, both quite potty in their own way.

My 2022 treats were Tanya Shadrick’s powerful and honest The Cure for Sleep and then, just as reasonable holidaying was coming to an end, the latest from Amy Liptrot. Her first book, The Outrun, was a marvel. In her second, The Instant, I was delighted to find a reference to something relevant for me – she was talking about the wildlife she would see in Berlin, in particular the raccoons.

Raccoons have taken up residence in the parks of the city. There are records of small releases of raccoons in central Germany in 1927 and around Berlin in 1935. But the real surge of these furry and dextrous beasts was during the Second World War, when many escaped from fur farms around the city.

There are potential conservation problems. Raccoons are omnivorous, and while they are very happy to feast on human leavings – my Berlin-living brother has noted the bin-eruptions as a sure sign they have been around – they will also happily dine out on the eggs and nestlings of Berlin’s birds.

They have made their home in the city, and have become so comfortable that stories of them joining commuters on the underground don’t make headlines anymore. Though they do still make news sometimes – Spiegel International reported in 2008 the complication that they caused for one of the city’s landmark hotels as they tried to work out what to do with the furry guest who had taken up residence in their garage. Named Alex by hotel staff, the raccoon had a moment of celebrity status as stories appeared in the press. But attempts to move him on were thwarted by the law, which said that only if the animal posed a danger should it be moved.

The German for raccoon is waschbaer – wash bear, after the way it delicately washes food. They are not quite so highly thought of in the United Kingdom. In 2010 the Daily Star carried the headline ‘Nazi raccoons attack Britain’ in reference to the ‘vicious pests’ being spotted in County Durham.

With incisive skills the paper told a story of Hitler’s raccoons and how they had rampaged across Europe and were now terrorising residents of Blighty.

The terrorising came in the form of one being spotted utilising a garden bird feeder.

While the Berlin reaction to raccoons is rather relaxed, that is not the case on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. These islands, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, are home to more than 1.5 million breeding seabirds, many of whom are burrow-nesting. This was not something that the Provincial Game Commission considered when it released raccoons onto the islands in the early 1940s as part of efforts to support the fur industry.

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