Raccoon Pain

Raccoon Pain

        Not long after I came to Canada, a cute raccoon appeared in the backyard of the house where I lived. The raccoon looked very hungry, and soon it ate up all the food scraps it could find in the backyard. I leisurely admired its silly behavior while eating, but I inadvertently saw fear and anxiety in its eyes, strictly speaking, fear of me, a human being, which is a look I have never seen in any other animal in Canada and the United States.

1. Why is it so scared?

        I thought about the reasons and finally understood after searching online that it was because many people were discriminating and hostile to raccoons. But why do people have good intentions towards other animals that occasionally intrude into our living areas, even wolves, insects, tigers, and leopards that threaten our lives, but why do Canadians discriminate and even hostile towards such a cute, harmless and even kind raccoon?

        After talking to the locals, I learned that there are four main reasons why raccoons give people a bad impression: 1. Raccoons will invade and destroy people's houses; 2. Raccoons will attack people; 3. Raccoons bring infectious diseases; 4. Raccoons will rummage through garbage to find food, thus making our environment a mess.

        Regarding these issues, I carefully looked into the living habits of raccoons and found that this was not the case.

        1. Occupy human houses

        There are not many examples of this from all over the world, from history to the present, but the spread of the Internet gives people the impression that raccoons are habitual burglars who take over houses. In fact, raccoons often move into houses that have been abandoned by humans for a long time. If this house has been abandoned by you, then raccoons should make the best use of it by reusing it.

        2. Raccoons often attack people

        However, according to my personal experience and observations as well as the results of online searches, like all animals, raccoons will never attack humans first if humans do not attack them intentionally. Their attacks on humans are completely instinctive, just like all other animals. When humans attack them or drive them away maliciously, they will react instinctively—frightened, nervous, running away and stretching out their claws—regardless of whether it is a human or other animal in front of them, or even a tree that does not move, they will be attacked instinctively.

        3. Raccoons carry infectious diseases

        Can raccoons transmit infectious diseases to humans? Possibly, but what animal -- any animal that lives in close proximity to humans -- can't transmit infectious diseases to humans? Cats, dogs, rats?

        In this way, the above three reasons for hating raccoons are actually imposed on raccoons by people. In fact, many animals are even worse than raccoons in these aspects. In other words, the fourth reason really makes people hate raccoons: they rummage through human garbage and look for food in garbage dumps. They pollute the human environment! The space and living habits they live in are too close to those of humans. This is their misfortune. They rely to a large extent on the leftovers thrown away by humans to survive, and they even rely on the care of humans to survive. They knew that humans were hostile to them, but they still took the risk to come to places where humans live because they were forced to do so by life! It was this seemingly harmless behavior of the raccoon that triggered the strong hostility of such kind people towards the raccoon, which was indeed beyond my expectation.

        In this country, when any animals are threatened, kind people are always willing to protect them, just like people's sympathy for jackals, tigers and leopards. Although these animals are very ferocious, when these beasts are injured or in desperate situations, people will still protect them regardless of the cost.

        However, people's sympathy for animals gradually disappeared from raccoons. People can sympathize with fierce beasts that pose a life threat to humans, but they lose this love for weak raccoons. The reason is simple. The former are far away from our living areas and only appear occasionally in our living areas. When they appear around us, they bring changes and fun to our lives; while raccoons live around us, and their living habits interfere with human daily life, which makes us begin to hate them and even hostile to them. The government has to design special trash cans for them so that they cannot open the lids of the trash cans, so that they cannot get the food that humans have discarded - the food that raccoons rely on for survival. It just makes our environment a little dirty and makes us uncomfortable.

          Humans, the smartest creatures on this planet, can sometimes be so selfish and cruel!

        People generally have a kind of mentality: conclusion default. That is, when most people in the human race develop prejudices against a certain person or a certain animal for some reason, they often deny this person or animal without discrimination and without thinking. All mistakes are the fault of this person or animal, even if he (it) did nothing wrong, such as raccoons. Humans intentionally or unintentionally impose or exaggerate the three crimes of raccoons, just to make us justifiably and comfortably drive them away and harm them without being condemned by our conscience. Our definition of whether an animal is beneficial or harmful depends entirely on whether the animal is beneficial or harmful to humans. The starting point is always standing on the standpoint of us humans. This is the tragedy of raccoons.

        As I write this, I think of the campaign to eradicate the four pests during the Cultural Revolution in China. At that time, sparrows were defined as harmful birds because they ate food. Therefore, sparrows were hunted and killed in China. To this day, many Chinese people believe that sparrows are pests. This is how people judge the goodness or badness of animals based on whether they are beneficial to us humans.

         But this is Canada after all, and Canadians don't exactly apply that way of thinking to raccoons.

        Kind people are closest to God, so we should treat this weak group with God's eyes instead of human eyes. I believe that once Canadians understand this truth, they will show human kindness and tolerance when they face raccoons again.

        I am a firm Buddhist practitioner. I believe in the principles of karma and retribution in the six realms of reincarnation. I believe that our true life must go through countless reincarnations, and at different times we may be different people, animals, or even plants. From this point of view, the raccoon in front of you at this moment, like all other animals, has a certain connection with us. So every time I see the helpless expressions and terrified eyes of weak lives, my heart is always filled with sadness. Their fate is in the hands of the powerful human species, and in your hands. Facing this helpless life in front of you, facing a life that is almost frozen in the ice and snow, facing a life that is lying on your window and looking inside in the wind and snow at -20 degrees Celsius, I don’t know what reason we have to refuse to give it a bite of food and try to let its life continue; I don’t know what reason we have to cruelly wrap up the leftovers that we have already thrown into the trash can with an iron bucket that it can never open so that it can’t steal food - and this is just because they have scattered our garbage, please let us pick up the garbage again. Put yourself in their shoes, if the hungry and cold animal standing in the wind and snow at this moment is you, how do you want the life standing in the house to treat you?

        Everyone has a hidden heart! There was one time when I saw a raccoon I was feeding crying while eating. Thinking about their situation and their future, I couldn't help but burst into tears. Fortunately, there was no one next to me, so I could accompany it and cry silently without any scruples. As a living being, we can be compassionate to those wolves, insects, tigers and leopards that may even destroy our lives, but we want to kill the raccoons that only make our lives a little inconvenient, and call it for their own good. How can we bear it!

        I silently told it to live well and not to create more karma, so that it could be reborn as a human being in the next life. Then it would be able to control its own destiny, use its human body to cultivate itself, and never fall into the suffering of reincarnation.

        Second, will feeding or treating raccoons well disrupt the ecological balance? Will it make raccoons lose their ability to survive in the wild?

        Some people have a deep-rooted belief that feeding raccoons will disrupt the balance of nature and even make raccoons lose their ability to survive in the wild. I don't want to discuss such a profound topic, and I don't understand such a profound topic. I just intuitively think that occasionally feeding raccoons will definitely not disrupt the balance of nature, nor will it make raccoons lose their ability to survive in the wild. Because no matter how much I or people promote the harmlessness of raccoons, people who feed raccoons are always occasional and very few. Short-term occasional charity is to save raccoons in an emergency, it is to save lives! It's like a person is hungry and dying of hunger, and you don't give him food and tell him: "I don't feed you because it's for your own good. I can't let you lose your ability to survive in the wild." Isn't this very cruel?

        People feeding animals is a natural expression of evil. People who do this are simply doing it to live up to their conscience and make themselves feel better. It is God's will! There is really no need to elevate this matter to the level of natural balance. We just do it for convenience regardless of right or wrong. In fact, apart from God, who knows whether their behavior is right or wrong? 

        I know Canadians are very kind. They are just used to a certain way of thinking: raccoons are inconvenient for us, so we regard them as unwelcome animals. In fact, apart from this shortcoming, raccoons are animals that live around us and are very close to people. What the young life does is only for its own survival. It does not know that its behavior brings trouble to humans. However, we cruelly drive them away from our sight in a climate of minus 20 degrees. When you see its terrified eyes, you will know how much harm we have brought to them.

        I hope people will stop harming this weak and lovely life; I hope the gods will bless the raccoons to live forever and peacefully in Canada, this free, kind and beautiful land.

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(Thankfully, through the efforts of my colleagues, this article has been published by the local media. Perhaps it will play a small role in improving the situation of raccoons. I am very grateful for this.)