Raccoon Thanksgiving

After Toronto unveiled its "raccoon-resistant" compost bins in 2016, some people feared the animals would be starved but many more celebrated the innovative design. Rolling out this novel locked bin opened a new battlefront in city's ongoing "war on raccoons."

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

  Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all, exhilarating. At Acura, that means looking closely at how every detail can make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding. Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra. That's precision crafted performance. That's Acura. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year: the first school drop-off, the first sweater weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit.

• 0:44Roman Mars?

  For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions: crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean: Being an Outsider.

• 1:08Roman Mars?

  This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

• 1:13Roman Mars?

  Every November, Americans gather together to celebrate important traditions: shopping for doorbuster deals on 72-inch TVs, watching Snoopy balloons float down Sixth Avenue, and we eat a lot of food. Lots of food means lots of food waste. And so, after your Thanksgiving, you might find yourself hosting an unwanted second gathering: raccoons rummaging in your garbage for discarded turkey and uneaten yams. Today, we're presenting a remixed all-time favorite story we ran for Thanksgiving 2018. It's about our friendly neighbors up north and their attempt to defend themselves from an invading army of trash pandas. Enjoy.

• 2:02Roman Mars?

  The city of Toronto has a special relationship with raccoons, or at least, they think they do.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  We are not the only city with raccoons, but we often act like we are. We like to think Toronto is the raccoon capital of the world, and we're strangely proud of that distinction. But we really have no data to back it up.

• 2:22Roman Mars?

  This is Amy Dempsey, a reporter for The Toronto Star.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Do we have more raccoons than, say, Chicago or Vancouver? Well, we don't actually know. You can't count urban raccoons. They're all over the place.

• 2:34Roman Mars?

  But who needs data when you can feel it in your heart?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  A few years ago, when a raccoon died on Yonge Street, Torontonians named him Conrad and built a vigil around his body with flowers and a framed photo, cards. So if science ever disproves this idea of Toronto as raccoon nation, I really fear for Toronto. I think we're gonna have an identity crisis.

• 2:57Roman Mars?

  But Toronto's feelings about raccoons are not uncomplicated.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Our relationship with raccoons is kind of a love-hate relationship. We hate when they destroy our grass and break into our houses. And yes, they do break into our houses.

• 3:11Roman Mars?

  Maybe worse than all this, though, was the raccoon's proclivity for getting into the compost, which the city started collecting for the residents in green bins several years ago. From the perspective of the raccoons, these compost bins were an incredible development, an all-you-can-eat buffet with the plastic and other garbage already thoughtfully removed.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  And the raccoons would go to town on our stuff and just spread it everywhere. And you'd wake up, look out your window, and go, [BLEEP]. And then maybe you'd argue with your spouse or roommates about who'd have to clean it up.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  The green bins become a feast, a veritable feast for the raccoons.

• 3:46Roman Mars?

  This is Toronto Mayor John Tory, a few years ago, dressed in a blue suit in front of a row of Canadian flags, as if he's announcing a plan to step up the war on crime. And in a way, he was.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Probably nothing that represents more of a nuisance in a big city like this than the feasting of the raccoons on the contents of the green bins.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  The war on raccoons sort of started with Mayor John Tory.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  We've discovered that the members of Raccoon Nation are smart, they're hungry, and they're determined. But our job, together with our private sector reinforcements, is to show them that we are smarter.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  He said things like-

• 4:25Speaker 02

  We are ready, we are armed, we are motivated.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  We have left no stone unturned in our fight against Raccoon Nation.

• 4:34Roman Mars?

  The reason Mayor Tory felt so prepared that day was that the city was unveiling a new raccoon-resistant green bin for organic waste. During this same press conference, the mayor held up the new bin victoriously and hammed it up with reporters as cameras flashed.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I would say it was 75% tongue-in-cheek, but there was also a hint of seriousness to it. It was pretty clear that he was confident the new green bins would solve our raccoon problems, confident enough to stand in front of news cameras and say, you know, defeat is not an option.

• 5:12Roman Mars?

  But Amy was about to find out for herself whether defeat was an option. And spoiler alert, it was an option.

• 5:26Roman Mars?

  Let's back up just a bit. This all started the way most things start in cities with an rfp.pdf.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they put out a request for proposals, asking for a new generation green bin and emphasizing that it had to be rodent-resistant, aka animal-resistant, aka raccoon-proof, please. The company that won was called Rarig Pacific.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  I'm Dennis Monastir with Rarig Pacific, and I serve as the environmental sales manager for Canada.

• 5:59Roman Mars?

  If the city of Toronto was in a war with raccoons, this, ladies and gentlemen, was the general in charge of a major front, and he took his role very seriously.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  I mean, Rarig Pacific takes new product development very, very seriously, and there's a five-pronged approach, which we initiate.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Dennis is in many ways a classic sales guy. He wears shirts with his company logo, he has a firm handshake. I found him to be extremely helpful and genuine. And when he speaks about the green bin, you can tell he's really proud of it.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  It's something that I'm very, very passionate about, not only being part of the design team, but I'm also a resident in the city of Toronto. So I know what it means to me as a resident.

• 6:49Roman Mars?

  Raric Pacific had a number of design criteria they were trying to meet with their green bin prototype. For example, the bins would need to be picked up and dumped by an automatic arm that reached out from the truck. So the bin would need a lid that closed and locked to protect against raccoons. But the lid would also have to open up automatically when the bin was turned upside down and dumped into the truck by the arm.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  So we had to ensure that the lock itself disengages 100% of the time. The container must function in extreme weather conditions. Ergonomics, easily opened with one single hand. We were looking at, you know, safety. Kids end up in the darndest places. Definitely don't want them in an organics container, but more importantly, we don't want them locked inside the container. Elimination of internal catch points. Any material that becomes trapped inside the container could pose a significant risk with respect to the Ic factor for the residents.

• 7:44Roman Mars?

  But on top of the Ic factor and the meddling kids, Raric Pacific had to think about enemy number one: the raccoons.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we worked with an urban raccoon specialist to basically understand raccoons' likes, dislikes, their dexterity, what they can and cannot do.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  It was a local raccoon specialist by the name of Suzanne McDonald.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  I'm Dr. Suzanne McDonald. I'm a professor at York University. I study animal behavior.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  I'm calling her a raccoon specialist really downplays her accomplishments. She is a professor of biology and psychology who has studied just about every animal you can think of.

• 8:24Roman Mars?

  She may have studied every animal you can think of, but in Toronto, there's only one animal that matters.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  In Toronto, everybody talks about raccoons. I work in Vancouver a lot and nobody talks about raccoons there. There's raccoons all the time.

• 8:36Roman Mars?

  So she wasn't that surprised when Raric Pacific got in touch as they were designing their bin.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  And they asked me to talk to them about how raccoons work, and I did.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Well, raccoons are omnivores, so that means they can eat everything. They're mischievous. Raccoons have really good teeth. They'll use them. They don't want to use them. They want you to go away.

• 8:58Roman Mars?

  You go away. You're in my yard.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  They also get a taste for human food. So, once they get a taste for that Indian takeout that we've thrown out that they've enjoyed, from then on, it's like berries. I'm not eating berries. We look at them, they look at us. If you would look at a monkey in the face, they'll look away. But raccoons don't. They look right at us.

• 9:16Roman Mars?

  They look right through us.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  You know, they have pretty good senses of smell. They have pretty good vision. But touch is their superpower. They're very persistent. They will work at a problem for hours and hours and hours. And they're pretty strong.

• 9:29Roman Mars?

  Rarick Pacific took all of this information and applied it to their bin design.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  There was multiple iterations of the design. There's multiple photorealistic renderings.

• 9:41Roman Mars?

  In the end, they came out with a bin they believed in. It's an olive green, 26-gallon container with a lid that closes and locks.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  We felt very, very confident with the success of that locking mechanism and the container itself.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  So, the new green bin rollout took about 18 months from start to finish. People are waiting for their new green bins and people are getting really excited about these things. Before, they were rolled out on my street. They were rolled out on some of the streets nearby. So, people on my street would have to walk by and see that homes near us had the new green bin and we didn't. And you'd sort of be thinking on your walk to the subway to go to work, like, what the hell? Where's my bin?

• 10:30Roman Mars?

  But eventually, Amy did get a bin of her own.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  So, on the lid, there is a dial, like a handle, that you turn. And when it's in the horizontal position, it's open. When it's in the vertical position, it's secured. It's locked. You actually have to turn it in a way that really would make it difficult, if not impossible, to turn if you don't have opposable thumbs.

• 10:57Roman Mars?

  And contrary to popular belief, raccoons don't have opposable thumbs, even though they can move the thumb-like digit on their creepy little hands a little bit. In any case, for a while, everything seemed to be going according to plan. In fact, some people were worried that the new bins were working too well. In other words, people were afraid that without the green bins as a food source, maybe the raccoons were starving.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So the way I became involved in all of this was that in January of 2018, a friend sent me a note saying that he believed the new green bins had eliminated the raccoon population in Toronto. He actually used the word eliminated.

• 11:37Roman Mars?

  As any intrepid reporter would do, Amy decided to look into it.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  I wrote a quick email to Suzanne McDonald, our local raccoon expert. And I said, hey, could the raccoons be dying? And she just said, eh, they're probably hiding from the cold. But, she said, she would have more information in a few months. She said, after I measure more dead raccoons. So I, of course, wrote back immediately and said, can I come?

• 12:06Roman Mars?

  Animal Control was collecting raccoons killed by cars and storing them in freezers for Suzanne, who would then come in and measure them in order to track the health of the population from year to year.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  And I do this four times a year. And when you go in July, it turns out, and you bring out frozen raccoon carcasses, and it takes a while to measure them, they start to melt. Oh, dear God, you can imagine the maggots and the blood and the... all the things, but that's fine. I mean, this is science. We push through.

• 12:38Roman Mars?

  Suzanne wouldn't have the results of her data for a while. But while Amy was there watching her measure dead raccoons, she asked her.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Do you think it's possible they could learn how to get into the new green bins? And she shook her head no. She said, you know, she'd filmed them trying and not one of them could do it. She just said, they won't, they won't get in. The raccoons won't break into these green bins.

• 13:02Speaker 05

  There is no such thing as a raccoon-proof green bin. Toronto spent a lot of money on the raccoon-proof green bins. And this was video that was put out yesterday. So I come out.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Then about a week later, this story comes out.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  And so look to your left.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  So watch, because they'll zoom into it here. Hold on.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  It's basically a local Toronto resident who has filmed the video of a raccoon opening his green bin.

• 13:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's give that a little tug.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  There we go.

• 13:31Speaker 06

  Well, something smells good.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And just like, kind of winking at the camera almost.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Really?

• 13:38Roman Mars?

  This was not the only report of a bin being broken into, although it was the first to include video, which quickly went viral, much to the dismay of Dennis Monastir from Rarig Pacific.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  For somebody just to come out and say, oh, the container doesn't work, you know, is frustrating.

• 13:54Roman Mars?

  The videos, Dennis says, don't tell the whole story. A couple of break-ins doesn't mean the design is flawed.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  The screw might be loosened too much. And if you just simply tighten it a little bit, it might prevent the issue.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Dennis is frustrated by the fact that sometimes when people have issues with their green bins, they don't call the city. They don't report their issues to 311. Instead, they sometimes call the local newspaper and then it becomes a story. I think he said something to me like, you know, when your car breaks down, you don't call the Toronto Star. You call the mechanic.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  I don't know. For some reason, you know, Toronto specifically, they love to glamorize raccoons.

• 14:37Roman Mars?

  The city, for its part, blamed the handful of break-ins on user error.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And the city's response was to suggest that these homeowners weren't locking their bins properly and to emphasize they had only had a handful of complaints out of 450,000 green bins.

• 14:54Roman Mars?

  The suggestion being that if Joe in Yorkville had a problem with his bin?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Then maybe the problem was Joe and not the bin.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  So soon after,

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I woke up one morning and walked outside and saw that my neighbor's green bin was on the ground in our laneway. And there was food everywhere. So I texted my neighbor and said, "The raccoons have gotten into your green bin." She said, you know, "What the hell? Can the raccoons get into the green bins now?"

• 15:33Roman Mars?

  At this point, Amy had been convinced by the city's argument. There was no problem with the bins. The problem was the users.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  I wrote back and said, "More likely that you didn't lock it properly." I still have the text message, and when I read it, I cringe a little bit. It's like, "No, I don't think you locked it properly, Caroline."

• 15:55Roman Mars?

  But Amy didn't get to stay smug for long. Two nights later, her own bin was plundered.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  My husband and I get a group text message from Caroline. "The raccoons have gotten into your green bin." At this point, I'm floored because my husband is a person who locks things and checks locks like seven times.

• 16:18Roman Mars?

  It seemed the reporter had just become a character in her own story.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I'm thinking like, first of all, do they, like, this is so weird. Do they know that I was looking into this stuff? You know? Am I being targeted?

• 16:31Roman Mars?

  Amy called the city, who said, "Ma'am, please, you probably just have a broken handle." And they sent some workers out to fix it.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  And they replaced the lid on my bin as a precaution, even though they couldn't find anything wrong with it.

• 16:45Roman Mars?

  She also wrote to the raccoon expert Suzanne McDonald, who was thrilled because she's always secretly been on Team Raccoon.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  She wrote back almost immediately and said, "That is awesome." And she said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna loan you a trail camera, and you have to see how they're doing it." So I get this, I get the camera from Suzanne. We meet up at the zoo one day.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I go to our, our local grocery store and I get a couple of chickens. Put the chicken in the green bin, rubbed some of the chicken grease all over the green bin. The first night, raccoons did not come. The second night, I went out to the front porch, actually with my toddler. We peeked around the corner and my, my daughter said, "Uh-oh." The bin was down, it was a mess. I took the camera upstairs and pressed play on the video that I captured. It's almost as though the raccoons knew what I was doing and, and they were like, "Let's give her a really good shot here. This one is gonna go viral." Camera is pointing at the bins and then all of a sudden this, this mama raccoon comes

• 17:54Speaker 01

  skulking out and she just pulls the bin down like, and she, she gets out of the way. Like at this point, you can tell she knows what she's doing. Like she's not gonna stand in the way and get crushed by the bin. No, she's gonna pull it at the exact right angle and it just falls down with like a bang and turns around and looks at the camera as if to say, "Watch this." And then she turns the handle and just open, like just turns it, yoink, opens it just like I would and in they go.

• 18:29Roman Mars?

  The key seemed to be knocking down the bin, which made the handle much easier to turn.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  When it's on the ground, you can just kind of pull on it, like as if you're pulling a lever, you know, you can almost bat your paws at it or like pull it to the side.

• 18:45Roman Mars?

  On August 30th, 2018, Amy published an article in the Toronto Star with her video and as these things tend to do in Toronto, it went viral. Thousands of Torontonians watched as the protagonist handily pulled down the bin and then flashing her glowing eyes at the camera, showed off how easily she could open it. Amy got a bunch of emails and comments on the article, people saying that this was happening to them too, but the city maintained they were getting relatively few complaints overall.

• 19:17Roman Mars?

  When Amy told Dennis Monisir from Raric Pacific that the raccoons were getting into the bin that his company designed, he decided to pay her a house call.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  You know, I personally wanted to go out there myself to inspect the container and to do some torque force testing on the handle itself.

• 19:35Roman Mars?

  Some heroes don't wear capes. They wear polo shirts with the company logo on the breast pocket.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  The day Dennis came over, my neighbor Mike came over as soon as he saw this guy in my driveway working on the green bin. But Mike had no idea that this is the green bin guy.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  It seemed like there was a gang of neighbors that came up all of a sudden out of nowhere. And it was just like, oh, we have, you know, we have some problems with the raccoons getting into our bins.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Getting into my bin, they're getting into everybody's bin. And he's just ripping on the green bins and the waste of money.

• 20:12Roman Mars?

  Dennis took it all like a champ. He tightened up everyone's handles so they'd be particularly hard for little raccoon paws to turn. But it hasn't solved the problem.

• 20:24Roman Mars?

  Having accepted defeat, Amy now keeps her bins tied to a wall so raccoons can't knock them over. And she can't help but wonder how soon before this knowledge about how to open the bins spreads to the rest of Raccoon Nation.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Raccoons don't teach each other these things. That's called social learning. And even most monkeys don't do that. And so it's not like this innovation is going to spread across the city.

• 20:50Roman Mars?

  Suzanne McDonald doesn't think most raccoons in Toronto currently have what it takes to get into the new green compost bins, that perfect combination of strength, intelligence, and determination. Amy just happened to encounter an extra gifted one.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  We call her the genius raccoon because I think it's amazing that she did it.

• 21:10Roman Mars?

  Suzanne finally finished her dead raccoon study, and Toronto's favourite frenemy is as fat as ever. She thinks that's because even though most of them can't get into the compost, they've moved on to a different solution: the good old fashioned garbage.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Our raccoons are not starving to death, that's for sure.

• 21:28Roman Mars?

  But she doesn't rule out that in a far-off future, we might end up creating an uber raccoon, one like Amy's that can get into just about anything. She's studied raccoons in cities, and they are, on the whole, smarter than their rural counterparts. Urban raccoons are constantly having new problems placed in front of them to solve, and they keep figuring them out. And Suzanne and Dennis both tell people that the green bins were never advertised as raccoon-proof, only raccoon-resistant. Nothing is raccoon-proof, they say, which is a small concession that while the front of the line is holding for now, the war against raccoons continues.

• 22:17Roman Mars?

  After the break, more Raccoon Hijinks with Kurt Kohlstedt.

• 22:26Roman Mars?

  Support for this episode comes from Amazon Business. When it comes to your business, procurement shouldn't be a guessing game. Whether you're running a small business or managing a large organisation, Amazon Business offers smart purchasing experiences designed to meet your unique needs. Smart tech, smarter decisions. Streamline your buying process, save time and money, and gain valuable insights. Amazon Business empowers you and your team to buy with confidence. Learn more at amazonbusiness.com. Ready to give your home a style refresh? Article makes it easy to create a stylish, long-lasting home at an unbeatable price. They offer a curated selection of mid-century modern coastal and Scandi-inspired pieces

• 23:09Roman Mars?

  that will make a perfect addition to your home. All Article collections are carefully curated, focusing solely on high-quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. And with Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence. I'm trying to think of any of the Article furniture I haven't talked about at this point. I have couches, I have dining room sets, I have sideboards, I have, what do you call it? A media center thing that you put a TV on? Side tables, end tables, chairs. All of them are still in heavy use in my house and all of them have held up great. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/99 and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

• 23:53Roman Mars?

  That's article.com/99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions. Crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider.

• 24:35Roman Mars?

  If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Indeed-sponsored jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job, the premium status it deserves, at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs.

• 25:11Roman Mars?

  If you listen to the show regularly, you know that Kurt Kohlstedt has a background in architecture. But if you also read the articles on our site, you probably also know that he's really into raccoons, too. So when these two interests intersect, like, say, a raccoon going viral on the internet for climbing up a downtown St. Paul office tower earlier this year, he was all over that story.

• 25:31Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, instantly. You know, the local news is there covering the story, on the scene, in Minnesota. But I'm out here researching the actual building that the raccoon is climbing. And I got super into it. I was analyzing the facade and the materials. I started diagramming and then deconstructing the route that this raccoon took to the top.

• 25:48Roman Mars?

  And so if you want like a, like, straight-up Kennedy assassination-style deconstruction of that whole saga, you can check out our website. But before we get too far off track, Kurt is here today with a story of a different famous raccoon from nearly a century ago, one that eventually resided in a particularly famous work of American architecture: the White House.

• 26:09Speaker 07

  Oh, yes. History's not exactly full of famous raccoons, but there's this one in particular that really stands out, especially around Thanksgiving. Her name was Rebecca, and in 1926, she was sent to President Calvin Coolidge as a gift from a constituent in Mississippi. But this raccoon wasn't meant to be a pet. The idea was actually that she'd be served up as part of the holiday feast.

• 26:32Roman Mars?

  Which is not the most traditional Thanksgiving meal.

• 26:34Speaker 07

  No, I mean, not today, at least. But a century ago, wild animals were much more common to see on, you know, dinner plates. Meals with duck or turtle or possum were pretty typical. And in some cases, there were even regional delicacies. And then also, you know, sending animals as food to the White House for the holidays was a pretty popular tradition.

• 26:53Roman Mars?

  So the president getting sent a raccoon wasn't maybe not that odd, but him keeping him as a pet was out of the ordinary?

• 27:00Speaker 07

  Right. I mean, that's a little bit more unusual. When we think about presidents and Thanksgiving, we usually think of that turkey pardoning tradition, and that's about it. But for Coolidge, it wasn't that weird. He and his wife had tons of pets. They had cats and dogs and birds, of course, but also these really exotic ones. Over the years, they got wallabies and a bear, a pair of lion cubs, even a pygmy hippo. Most of these, you know, as gifts, often from, you know, foreign dignitaries who knew that the Coolidges were really into weird animals.

• 27:30Roman Mars?

  But I'm still having a hard time picturing like a pygmy hippo running around the White House, though.

• 27:35Speaker 07

  Right. Well, some of them, they, you know, re-gifted to zoos that could actually take care of them. But the Coolidge's did keep a lot of them as pets, and they formed this kind of weird White House menagerie, or as one reporter called it, the Pennsylvania Avenue Zoo.

• 27:50Roman Mars?

  And so what about Rebecca, the raccoon?

• 27:53Speaker 07

  Well, she became part of the first family, essentially. Grace, the first lady, would walk her around on a leash during the day, and then at night, she'd curl up with Calvin on his lap next to the fireplace.

• 28:03Roman Mars?

  That sounds like a pretty good pet.

• 28:05Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, I mean, that's one side of it. The other side is that she was still a wild animal, and she became kind of infamous for, you know, chewing her way out of her enclosures, and she'd wriggle out of the collars they put on her, and she'd claw up the furniture in the White House. There's these stories of the Secret Service having to chase her around while she runs up trees, and, yeah, so she was a bit of a handful, too. But, you know, she got to hang out in the White House sometimes, and the rest of the time, she got this little wooden house that they put up for her on the South Lawn.

• 28:33Roman Mars?

  So she's a little bit of a hassle, but she seemed to have a pretty sweet life, Rebecca the raccoon?

• 28:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, she did, and she lived with the Coolidge's for a while, and then the first couple handed her off to a zoo. And there were rumors at the time that maybe Rebecca bit Calvin because one day he came out with a bandage on his hand. But Grace later wrote very fondly of this White House raccoon. According to her, Rebecca, quote, "enjoyed nothing better than being placed in a bathtub with a little water in it and given a cake of soap with which to play. In this fashion, she would amuse herself for an hour or more."

• 29:06Roman Mars?

  Wow. All right. Thank you, Kurt.

• 29:10Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 29:14Roman Mars?

  That episode originally aired in 2018, and as of this airing, Toronto has yet to declare victory in the war on raccoons.

• 29:29Roman Mars?

  99% Invisible was produced this week by Katie Mingle, based on Amy Dempsey's epic raccoon story from The Toronto Star. You should really read the whole thing. It's great. We'll have a link on the website. Original tech production by Sharif Youssef. Remix by Martín González. Music by Swan Rial. This episode is dedicated to our digital director, Kurt Kohlstedt, who enjoys nothing better than to be placed in a bathtub with a little water in it and given a cake of soap with which to play. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. Taylor Sheddrick is our intern. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Laish Madon, Joe Rosenberg, Gabriela Gladney, Kelly Prime, Nina Potuck, Jaka Medina Gleason,

• 30:12Roman Mars?

  and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of a Stitcher and SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building. And beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on our Discord server and also, we just joined Blue Sky. I don't know. We're gonna give it a shot. Let's just try to make it good, okay? You can find links to those social media sites, plus some great pictures of the First Lady Grace Coolidge and her raccoon friend Rebecca, as well as every past episode of 99PI, at 99pi.org.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  The perpetual pen tapper, the arbitrary fridge reorganizer, the holiday party planner that starts in May. Principal knows your star employees have their work quirks. Principal also knows how much these employees mean to your business. You need them. They need benefits. Work with Principal so they can help you help your team with a retirement and benefits plan that's right for them. Principal Life Insurance Company, Des Moines, Iowa.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  This podcast is supported by Nurtec ODT. Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtec. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtec can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtec is right for you, because your time is for you, not mine. Don't take if allergic to NerTech ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers

• 32:09Speaker 04

  and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NERTECH or visit nertek.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today. What do I gift my mom and nieces?

• 32:25Roman Mars?

  Walmart has top brands you know, like Ninja, Disney, Lego. Oh, Dad loves music. Sonos can bring his songs to life with sound that hits just right. And my coffee-obsessed bestie? They love me brews coffee right for mornings extra bright. All those great brands at Walmart? Who knew? We knew, now you do too. Shop gifts no love at Walmart.