Raccoons

At Herr K's last night the talk was of ticks and raccoons. The ticks are in the news at the moment especially because a lot of them carry the lethal and insidious Lyme disease, and are doing their best to spread it across Germany.

Raccoons, known here by the inappropriately cute-sounding name of Waschbären, were introduced here around the middle of the twentieth century, and have since gone on to spread across the country, eating and killing everything smaller than themselves. This map shows their present distribution in Germany - I'm currently just north of Edersee, downtown Racoonville.

Frau K is currently looking after a baby raccoon who turned up mewling and helpless on the road outside the house. Like all mammals, it's unbearably cute when young. I petted its tiny little head and it tried to suck on my finger. Awww. Except of course it actually just wanted to bite me, but hasn't yet grown any teeth.

Bless!

And who can we thank for bringing this vicious plague upon the land's unsuspecting fauna? Why, none other than Hermann Göring. Herr K and his neighbour Manfred explained that when Hermann wasn't busy banning newspapers or strutting about in a toga, he partook of the aristocratic pursuit of hunting, but thought that the German countryside could use a little more variety.

"He imported some raccoons from America," Herr K said, "and set them loose so German hunters would have something to shoot at."

"Yeah," Manfred added drily: "If it had worked, the war would never have started."

It would be more refreshing that jokes about the war and the myth of Teutonic Rage are allowed in this circle were it not for another of Herr K's neighbours, whom we shall call Deric, who turned out to be the most likable racist you could ever hope to meet. More on him next time.