That’s not something you see every day.
We love a good raccoon story here at Riff Outdoors, from the cute ones like a trash panda freezing as it’s caught in the act of trespassing to the more extreme stories of dads yeeting the animal after biting a kid; we’ve seen it all when it comes to the striped bandits. However, a hairless raccoon is a new one to add to our collection of stories.
A local news station in Canada reported that a Richmond, B.C. man spotted a hairless raccoon while driving his daughter to softball earlier this month. As the news report called it, the “follically challenged” masked bandit is a sight to see as it hardly resembles a raccoon.
“Having just returned from a three-day golf trip full of sun, he thought he was imagining things.”
The news anchor reported, and honestly, I don’t blame the man for second-guessing his sight. The raccoon looks like an extraterrestrial as it walks through the grass, with only a tiny tuff of hair on the tip of its tail. The marbled-looking skin is far different from the distance stripes that raccoons are known for, and its hunched back looks far more exaggerated without fur covering its body.
“You come back to the reality, and then you see this thing; you know that’s not reality. It almost looked like an alien. It looked like Dr. Evil’s cat but a raccoon version.”
The man who captured the video said, recalling the siting.
While some might think that this is a rare kind of raccoon, it’s suspected that the animal is likely suffering from mange, causing hair loss.
Reporters on this story did not know that another hairless raccoon was spotted at Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, in March, so naturally, I had to look that up out of curiosity. The raccoon found on this island was even less raccoon-looking than the one found in Richmond, B.C.
Take a look while you’re here.
