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Illustration, above, by Ryan Berkley. Go here to see all his delightful animal portraits.

MY ALL-TIME TOP BLOG POST is not about old houses, or gardens, or any of the things I usually write about. It’s a one-off about a raccoon that broke (or fell) into my house one night last summer when I was foolish enough to leave a skylight open. Every day, at least 100 people find my blog by searching on the word “raccoon.”

A friend of mine, knowing this, came up with a brilliant idea to drive traffic to my blog: write more about raccoons. Now I doubt many of those unsuspecting raccoon researchers stick around to become regular readers of casaCARA, if raccoons is what they’re interested in. But I decided it couldn’t hurt my numbers.

It turns out my raccoon is not the only famous raccoon on the East End of Long Island. There was Buster, who lived with the eccentric Beale sisters of Grey Gardens fame, and was fed every day. Buster, in fact, is the nom de blog of a fellow who runs a site about Grey Gardens.

Then there’s the raccoon monster of Montauk, a poor creature that washed up on the beach in the summer of ’08 and engendered much speculation as to what it was, until it was determined that it was, in fact, a drowned raccoon.

But getting back to my raccoon, I think he may still be living nearby. One thing about freshly fallen snow, you get to see who your visitors are. The other day, there were some raccoon-sized tracks leading under the front deck.

 

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