Raccoons

I have lived in urban areas my whole life, and I personally never had to worry about putting out the trash for the trucks to take away.  Either someone else took care of this (thanks, Dad!), or I lived in apartment complexes that would have a giant dumpster into which our trash could disappear, never again to be seen by us.  As a consequence I never fully realized how wily raccoons could be until I got here this summer.  Until today, actually.  My previous two raccoon encounters had been:

1. At the Bursley Hall bus stop freshman year, a bunch of us kiddies were startled to hear some rustling in a nearby trash can.  After some minutes a raccoon popped its head up, climbed out, and slinked away.  To my rather immense relief, the bus arrived shortly after.
2. Outside a branch of the Ann Arbor District Library earlier this spring, the fiancé and I saw a raccoon skulking around the dumpster which, due to the layout of the library's grounds, was relatively close to the sidewalk where we happened to be.  We watched in fascination as it managed to pry open the top and drop inside, after which we heard a bit of a commotion coming from inside the dumpster as I wondered how it would be able to get out.  We didn't stick around to find out exactly how.

This morning I arrived at the library to find two of the trash bins knocked on their sides and spilling their contents.  At first I suspected a raucous party--likely involving copious amounts of alcohol--had occurred last night (hey, you know, I have firsthand experience with going a bit crazy with end-of-semester stress--is it not unreasonable to think this happens to others as well?), but the wonderful people at the admin office immediately knew it was raccoons' work and made a call to the facilities staff to help clean it up.  Sure enough, when I got back to the library a closer inspection revealed paw prints all over the floor behind the reference desk--where I'm sitting right now, though in a chair, not on the floor.

Everything is now cleaned up thanks to one of the TAs and the quick response of the staff here; someone just came by to put signs on the doors exhorting people to please "CLOSE doors when you leave" (there have been multiple raccoon incidents recently); and we are all thankful that the raccoons didn't do anything worse to the collections or facility than going through the trash.  As far as I can determine they didn't help themselves to any books while they were here.

Cute, right?  UNTIL IT GETS INTO YOUR LIBRARY.
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

No one ever suspects the Asian librarian.

The fact that I, a relatively small Chinese American librarian, play hockey (in a co-ed league, no less), never fails to elicit reactions of surprise from people I mention this to.  This happened at lunchtime today during a conversation among a group of women talking about their kids playing sports.  It's a fantastic conversation starter because people usually want to know how I got into it, do I like it, what's it like, etc. which I don't mind at all because I usually have very little to say in a given conversation around here and it forces me out of my usual reserve.  Nobody, nobody suspects the unassuming Asian librarian of being the type to get under the other team's skin enough to draw penalties out on the ice.  Excited to play again in the fall!