Have you guys seen this?? Haha, it just seems so crazy and funny to me. I wanted to share.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5I5H7EeC8k
Pz!
Very cute.
If a porcupine can be domesticated like that, then surely
a raccoon can too.
I like the part when he starts spinning around on his own. :-)
Regarding domesticated raccoons -- surprisingly this is something I can talk a bit about, since my family had a pet dwarf raccoon when I was living in Oregon many years ago. Our raccoon was found as a baby (literally a tiny pink mammal!) by our dog who brought her home *in her mouth*. It sounds insane but it's true. So our raccoon was raised from a newborn baby until an adult (as adult as a dwarf raccoon can get).
Raccoons are a bit more difficult though, since they're sort of "crazy in the head" naturally and are highly mischievous (if you thought ferrets were bad, try a raccoon). They may not have opposable thumbs, but they absolutely can (and will) open things like jars of pickles, your refrigerator, or anything else that a normal domesticated animal couldn't. They absolutely require their own cage/pen (outside) since they climb all over everything. And despite their size, they often have no problem chasing things larger than them (in our case, ours hated my grandmother for reasons unknown).
Once ours became full grown (about half the size of a normal raccoon) we got in touch with the local Fish and Wildlife Reservation who found a fellow in Texas that needed a raccoon to take to schools to teach kids about raccoons. We donated her, and AFAIK she's still in Texas. :-)
And on a related note: my mother in her late teens + early 20s had two mountain lions as pets. *Those* can be domesticated (and must be done from birth, along with being declawed). They act, literally, like big housecats -- and one of them was also toilet-trained. I always thought my mum was fibbing until she showed me pictures of them.