When I was growing up in the Santa Cruz Mtns, one of our local family friends was an artist who specialized in pen-and-ink drawings of local wildlife, especially raccoons. She became enamored of a trash panda that would occasionally come sniffing around her property from the surrounding woods, so she started setting out dog kibble to lure it. Word spread around the raccoon community. That night five or six of the critters arrived at dusk and tussled over the bowl of dog food. She accommodated them by setting out more kibble. Within a week, if you were in her backyard at twilight, you'd witness a mass of raccoons emerging from the gloom for their evening meal. It seemed like there were at least thirty of 'em at a time. It was crazy and fantastical.
She made a lot of great raccoon drawings out of it and I got the sense the artist lady would've continued accommodating them indefinitely if her neighbors hadn't complained that the visitors were overrunning their yards too.
www.thisamericanlife.org
