Dan Werb at Literary Hub:
If you ask anybody in Toronto, they’ll tell you that raccoons, AKA the Procyon lotor (Latin for “before-dog washer,” given their apparent penchant for washing their food), are everywhere. The creatures have turned even the most gray urban spaces into wild landscapes, which have come to suit them far better than their original woodland home. There is no part of the city that they can’t master—or at least that’s what people here believe.
I want to test that theory by going to the most urban, concrete, and dead place I can think of to see if I can catch a glimpse. To my mind that’s Union Station, the epicenter of the city’s rail and transit system and the doorway into its sprawling and grid-like downtown district. If I see raccoon traces there, I figure, it will be pretty good evidence that these creatures have unlocked even the least accommodating micro-habitat across this massive metropolis. So I take the subway during rush hour, just as a raccoon did a few days earlier (after which it was praised for being so well-behaved), and emerge amid a crush of human bodies.
More here.
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