A&A and Sam The Record Man
80s cars
raccoons
Yeah, I went looking for a post that another poster put up and then pulled down, on the BBC showing a feature on Raccoons in Toronto.
So I Googled, and thought "Kewl, I found it on Youtube"...lol...except it's about twenty generations of Raccoon out of date. Oh well...
Funny story on Raccoons though. I met a friend who was visiting here from Holland, found her looking at the studios on Sterling, she was a photographer, I asked if she needed directions, and she was "just looking around, interested in the arts scene in Toronto", so I introduced her to many contacts, she ended up making very good use of her three month visit here, including my taking her on long treks with a great dog I walk. We never did see a Raccoon, believe it or not, trekking through the green valleys and lakefront of Toronto, but we did see a *Coywolf* in Scarborough @ McCowan and Colonial, just north of the trail (we were cycling). If she hadn't have seen it, I wouldn't have believed my own sight, took me a second to realize it wasn't a dog bounding across the road and back, the size of a German Shepherd (could have been chasing a rabbit), and it was far larger than your true Coyote, many of which I've seen and passed close to in the Docks and in the country, this was far larger. It was far too sudden to get a pic of, but by walking up to the spot where it bounded across and checking, it verified my visual sense of proportion. I saw it run across and back, enough to yell to her to look (I thought it was going to get hit by traffic) and she saw it bound back.
Amazing, and all the time I spend in the country, have never knowingly seen a Coywolf, but many Coyotes, and yet, right here in Toronto...a Coywolf. A savvy Raccoon would have no problem handling even a Coywolf, but rabbits stand no chance, to even regular Coyotes.
Edit to Add:
There's a lot on-line on the Coywolf, and much on them in Toronto, but here's the Nature of Things special on them, and I can state objectively, this is what we saw at McCowan and Colonial. Be very careful with letting small pets run loose. Large Toms and Dogs/Bitches will have no problem holding these at bay, they're too well fed, but fluffy little fashion dogs and fat cats? Yikes....
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2335154977
If any of you have seen Coyotes run, they have a peculiar gait, almost a slink, like their hind quarters are on short tethers/ligaments. You'll note the *bounding* ability of the Coywolf from the CBC footage.