Procyon Lotor

When I grew up, racoon was an exotic animal. I went to the zoo to see racoons -- they looked smart and were almost as exciting as tigers and zebras (stripes are really cool when you are seven years old.) Both English and Russian names for the animal sound funny (Russian name, енот, has an unusual phonetic structure.) As a teenager, I listened to "Rocky Racoon", although I didn't quite understand what it meant.

When I drive by the trash bin at night, I often see a couple of racoons there. What a letdown.