Readers are cautioned regarding sunflower seed larceny, experimental psychology, household countermeasures, and a raccoon who converts a laser pointer into useful intelligence. Mild Adirondack humiliation follows when the wildlife writes the operating manual.
10 Years Ago This Week
THE RACCOON LEARNS THE RULE
There are three kinds of raccoon you can have trouble with around Chateaugay Lake.
There’s the raccoon that don’t know you’re there.
There’s the raccoon that knows you’re there and don’t care.
And then there’s the raccoon that has studied the situation.
That last kind is where your real trouble starts, and I’ll tell you why.
We had one come around the house about ten years ago. He’d discovered the bird feeder outside the lake window, which was nothing remarkable. You put sunflower seed six feet from the woods and sooner or later somebody is going to regard that as an invitation.
Chickadees regard it as breakfast.
Squirrels regard it as an engineering problem.
A raccoon regards it as property temporarily being kept from them.
The first evening we caught him at it, somebody got out the cat’s laser pointer.
Now the cat understood the red dot according to cat principles, which is to say he had considerable practical experience with it and had learned nothing whatsoever. Put it on the floor and he chased it. Put it on the wall and he jumped at it. Put it under his paw and he lifted the paw to find out where it had gone.
The raccoon took a different approach.
The red dot landed beside him.
He left.
That looked like success.
This is where amateurs get into trouble.
Any fool can frighten a raccoon once. The important question is what the raccoon learns while you’re standing in the kitchen congratulating yourself.
The next evening he came back.
We put the red dot on the railing.
He backed away.
We moved it onto the feeder.
He backed away again.
But this time he didn’t go to the woods.
He stood maybe ten feet out in the grass and watched.
Now you’ve got an observational raccoon, which is an entirely different piece of equipment from a frightened raccoon.
The third night he commenced testing.
One paw on the feeder.
Red dot appears.
Paw off.
Red dot disappears.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Paw back on.
Dot.
Paw off.
No dot.
You could almost see the specifications being revised.
By the fourth night he had established one important fact: whatever the red thing was, it was not attached to the feeder.
This mattered.
We moved it across the railing, up the tree trunk, down through the grass, and along the side of the house.
He watched it travel.
He did not travel with it.
That eliminated the possibility, so far as he was concerned, that the light itself required immediate evacuation.
The next question was whether it could do anything.
So he made what I would call a limited entry.
One paw into the feeder.
A few sunflower seeds.
Back down the post.
Red dot running alongside him.
Nothing happened.
Next trip he used both paws.
Nothing happened.
Then he sat on the railing and ate.
That was about when we realized we were no longer frightening him.
We were furnishing him information.
Now, about educating a raccoon accidentally—you want to be careful with that.
A raccoon does not have to understand batteries.
He does not have to understand lasers.
He does not have to know there is a little electronic device in somebody’s hand producing a point of red light.
He only has to notice what happens before what.
And he had begun watching the kitchen.
The red dot never appeared by itself.
First there was movement behind the glass.
Then somebody raised a hand.
Then the light appeared.
So after several evenings he quit watching the light and started watching the hand.
That was a considerable improvement in his position.
You could put the dot six inches from his nose and he’d keep looking through the window.
Hand came up, he got cautious.
Hand went down, he went back to eating.
The light had been demoted.
It was no longer the threat.
It was an indicator.
The hand was Management.
Then he discovered the door.
This took another evening or two.
A hand at the window produced light.
A person disappearing from the window sometimes produced an opening door.
An opening door produced an actual human being outdoors.
That was altogether different.
The raccoon respected the door.
So his procedure changed.
If a person remained behind the glass, continue eating.
If the person disappeared from the window, step down.
Wait.
If the door stayed shut, return to the feeder.
If the door opened, increase distance.
There ain’t anything mystical about that.
That’s just good field work.
By the end of the week we had a raccoon performing what amounted to quality-control testing on the household defenses.
He knew the window stopped people.
He knew the light did not.
He knew the hand predicted the light.
He knew a person leaving the window mattered more than the light appearing.
He knew the door mattered more than the person.
And, most insulting of all, he had begun to estimate how much distance he actually needed.
At first he ran for the woods.
That wastes time.
Later he merely stepped off the feeder and moved a few yards away.
Door stays shut?
Back to supper.
Door opens?
Move farther.
Person comes outside?
Then you run.
This is what I mean by an educated raccoon.
A hungry raccoon steals birdseed.
An educated raccoon calculates minimum safe withdrawal.
Pretty soon we were the ones making adjustments.
Somebody suggested moving the feeder.
Somebody else said bring it inside at night.
There was discussion of a different hanger, a better latch, a motion light, and whether the whole feeding operation had become more trouble than the birds were worth.
Think about that.
We owned the house.
We bought the feeder.
We bought the sunflower seed.
We bought the laser pointer.
And within a week the only participant who had forced everybody else to revise procedure was the raccoon.
The cat, meanwhile, was still chasing the red dot across the living-room floor.
That’s another thing you want to remember when evaluating intelligence.
Never judge entirely by enthusiasm.
The last evening I remember clearly, the raccoon climbed onto the railing, looked through the window, and put one paw into the feeder.
The red dot appeared beside him.
He looked at it.
Then he looked at the hand holding the pointer.
He took a mouthful of sunflower seeds.
The hand moved.
He stepped down.
The hand stopped.
He waited.
Nothing else happened.
He climbed back up.
That was when I shut the pointer off.
There wasn’t much sense continuing.
Once the burglar understands that the alarm is operated manually, you don’t have an alarm anymore.
You’ve got a signal.
And once he understands the signal better than the fellow operating it, you’ve got a scheduling problem.
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What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?