A sudden guffaw at the dinner table.

What??

I just remembered what kept me awake last night: can raccoons bend their tails over their heads like squirrels? They can’t, right? But why not, or why would they. Wouldn’t they want all that fluff keeping them warm in winter when they’re asleep?

Off to Dr. Google. The AI summary that is the first thing that pops up these days (it used to be Wikipedia with Google supporting it and should still be if you ask me, but anyway) said that squirrels use their tails to control their falls and raccoons don’t fall so they don’t need it so no they can’t.

Remove the squirrels from the question and the AI said they could. They just often don’t.

Alright, let’s try to find the info where those are plagiarizing from and maybe we can get the real story.

(Too many minutes later) Or maybe not. Still: clearly, it’s not really a thing for them.

Oh look. Calvin Coolidge got sent a raccoon for Thanksgiving dinner (say what?!) and wound up naming it Rebecca and turning it into a pet.

Can you just see that trash panda roaming the White House. Wait till it finds the kitchen.

Although, they do have a high degree of intelligence. You wouldn’t catch one of them, say, *cough* cutting off the lunchtime food source of their young in rural areas.

(Spent a lot of time today counting stitches in patterns and mind’s-eye patterns and doing math and finding there just won’t be room for every detail I want to put in. Richard said, Well then you have to cut half out.

Not half. And the raccoon stays. I just have to knit it first.)