collaborative storytelling that is equal parts critical and creative

“Did you hear about the drunk raccoons in Central Park?” I hadn’t. A man from Brooklyn in a Silver Factory shirt told me about roving bands of striped furry creatures walking sideways through the park, sidling up to tourists. They’re not supposed to come out during the day, he explained, but because it’s getting warmer, we’ve fucked up their sleep cycles.

 

He’s wrong (it’s a fun game, Googling the claims men make). The ‘zombie raccoons’ in New York weren’t underslept, they had a disease called canine distemper virus. He’s right in sentiment, though: we (humans) are to blame. Raccoons contract CDV through contact with domesticated dogs. It’s something that only happens in urban areas and dense cities like New York accelerate its spread. Some research also claims that climate change could be shifting historic host-pathogen relationships in animals, causing new opportunities for infectious outbreaks.

 

Like much of the world’s population, raccoons are undergoing massive urban migration. In North America, the raccoon population increased 15 to 20 fold between 1930 and 1980 and is continuing to grow. Just ask the citizens of Toronto, the “Racoon Capital of the World,” where there are an estimated 200 raccoons per square mile—50 times more than in surrounding rural areas. The population has asserted its presence so strongly (search video clips of raccoons breaking through kitchen windows) that the city spent $25 million on creating “trash panda”-proof garbage bins.

 

The only time my college roommates and I talked to our upstairs neighbor was when a raccoon fell through her ceiling. Her screams startled everyone in the house, causing my friend to sprint up the stairs just as the creature scuttled down them into the backyard. This is what climate does—it throws us around, crashes us into one another. In fall people on the southern coast rush inland, in winter raccoons hibernate in our attics. We bump, scratch, sometimes cuddle each other. They aren’t saying climate change anymore, but climate chaos.

 

I’m at the point where instead of evading responsibility for environmental destruction, I over-assume it. I’m hyper-aware of every unseasonal temperature, every dead tree on my block, every raccoon up past dawn. Like the Brooklyner, I might not know exactly how, but I know it’s my fault. CDV is lethal for raccoons. This means the very thing causing them to grow (an urban environment with easily accessible food) is also killing them. Their ‘zombie apocalypse’ can only be a harbinger of our own.

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