Jimothy the raccoon has a rare spinal condition. Here's what that means

6 days ago (popsci.com)

It’s absolutely wild how Jimothy has taken over the internet. This is easily the most media attention anyone/anything from Ballard has ever gotten.

Also; Free Ballard! End the century of Seattle tyranny! https://www.seattle.gov/city-archives/exhibits-and-education... (JK, mostly)

  • Ballard: it's one of the only north Seattle neighborhoods vaguely affordable to buy in. Lots of young families. Try to ignore the meth heads camping next to the Burke Gilman and industrial areas. (I live in Ballard.)

    • As a fellow Ballard home owner I have to say that anyone who thinks Ballard is affordable to buy in is out of touch with reality.

      1 reply →

    • >it's one of the only north Seattle neighborhoods vaguely affordable to buy in

      Most north Seattle neighborhoods north of Ballard are more affordable to buy in than Ballard. Exceptions being North Beach / Blue Ridge, Windermere, Laurelhurst and similar.

      6 replies →

According to a local Instagram posting he has difficulty traversing fence rails.

When he was young, a year ago, a neighbor saw his family helping him as he fumbled.

And so this neighbor says they cut open a hole in their fence at ground level for him.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Da5pCzqjhx1/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da9V4-FOjc_/

So some are appearing to enable this one critter.

Also locally - Seattle - local agencies are celebrating, and sometimes incorporating him into their business, including city sanitation departments spicing up pro social sanitation messages about using garbage cans, claiming Jimothy would want it that way. Some of these messages make less obvious sense than others, IMO.

  • Well it also opens passageways for other ground-dwelling animals as well, which is a good thing. I believe in the UK and other places where hedgehogs are native it’s somewhat common for people to cut small holes in their fences so they can get around.

    So it’s not really a bad thing, IMO.

    • On my camera I only see cats. And AFAIK, domestic cats eat way more wild birds than anything and everything else human-made combined.

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  • Are you complaining about people helping a raccoon? The Internet hype is a bit much but why are you framing it like this raccoon should have died years ago.

    • What planet are you living on?

      Homeowners are generally legally liable for anything that occurs on their property, especially if it can affect neighbouring properties to any provable extent.

      There are carveouts and exemptions, but that isn’t a magical deflector shield.

      So it doesn’t take a huge imagination to see how it could have negative externalities.

      5 replies →

    • God forbid we put out a pan of dry kibbles for a stray cat or a water pan outside for hiking dogs during hot days. That would be “enabling”.

      17 replies →

    • it’ll probably end up badly, not because someone fed a raccoon, but because someone halfway across the planet will develop an unreasonable relationship with this wild animal.

> You’d have to be living under a dumpster not to have heard of Jimothy, Seattle’s favorite raccoon and the internet’s newest folk hero.

Or anywhere outside of Seattle, I suppose.

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  • Weird, joyless take. What do you get out of looking down on people appreciating a cute animal?

    • I think the critique was levied towards the notion of asking an ecologist to make a medical diagnosis of an individual based on a handful of tiktok clips rather than a stab at anyone's joy.

      The url is literally popsci.com though so I'm not sure what gp expected.

Don't want to rain on the parade of something people like but this kind of title tells me nothing and I detest it. It tells me the thing is going to die like any other animal and that's the circle of life yet it wants to create engagement. Please stop publishing like this.

Tell me why the spinal condition is important. Tell me why I need to read this article because of [magic?]. Now I know nothing and don't like it.