Tonight’s Higher Thought Game question concerns strange animal behavior:
“What is the Most Unlikely or Surprising Thing You’ve ever Seen an Animal Do?”
A long time ago I lived with someone who wasn’t afraid of raccoons — not afraid of their fierceness or even what they could conceivably do to her cat. She didn’t perceive them as hostile or unclean. She thought they were cute.
We were living in the Berkeley, CA hills, where there were plenty of raccoons. In fact, a family of them lived in a tree in our yard.
One early evening, we were sitting up in bed and three raccoons came sauntering across our back deck, separated from us by only a sliding glass door.
Those raccoons were walking by on the other side of the glass, just several feet away from us, and my friend called out to them in a delighted, adoring, aren’t-they-cute? voice, “Hi! Hi!” And she smiled and smiled.
And the raccoons stopped.
Then, almost as one organism, they all stood up on their hind legs, peering in through the glass, looking at us curiously.
Even I – who was and am a little afraid of raccoons – had to laugh.
It was like the raccoons were suspended, up on their hind legs, eyes wide, for a period of at least a few seconds, maybe even five to ten seconds.
That’s probably the strangest thing I’ve ever seen animals do.
Maybe you have a story too?
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