Intersectionality of Critical Animal Studies by Nocella Anthony J. / George Amber E

Intersectionality of Critical Animal Studies by Nocella Anthony J. / George Amber E

Author:Nocella, Anthony J. / George, Amber E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.


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CHAPTER EIGHT

Getting Their Hands Dirty

Raccoons, Freegans, and Urban “Trash”

LAUREN CORMAN

Introduction

During the summer of 2005, a local radio show prompted me to investigate the meaning(s) of raccoons (Procyon lotor) within urban landscapes. During the call-in program, listeners were invited to share their thoughts about raccoons and the implementation of Toronto’s municipal Green Bin waste management program. I was amazed by the callers’ largely vitriolic responses. Positioned as pests, raccoons were understood as enemies worthy of elimination, a so-called “problem” in need of fixing. Yet, the problem was an old one: the Green Bin Program simply drew the tensions between humans and urban animals into sharper focus.

The Green Bin Program began in 2002 within the Toronto municipality of Etobicoke. By September of 2004, central Toronto residents were introduced to the Program. Initiated by the city’s Waste Diversion Task Force, the bins were part of a three-pronged plan to eventually eliminate the exportation of 907,000 tons of annual garbage to Michigan (City of Toronto, 2010a).1 Some might guess that such a move to concentrate organic, edible waste2 would benefit nonhuman foragers, such as raccoons: making the disposal of organic waste municipally regulated meant that nonhuman animals could potentially gain greater access to food, as the city-donated bins were placed curbside by residents each week. ← 159 | 160 →

Although the public was assured that the bins were raccoon-proof, in practice the metal latches often provided little security. The temptation proved too great for the raccoons, and the challenge of the latches too small. “[E]ven if you’re not feeding raccoons on purpose, their lives and livelihoods in our communities are often sustained by one of the City’s biggest design backfires: the green bin,” claims Clayton (2009, p. 51). Typical of previous encounters between urban raccoons and “garbage,” many people were aggravated when these night-roamers rummaged through their disposal containers, and scattered the refuse (Sadler, n.d.; Vasil, 2005; Wanagas, 2005). The nature and concentration of the waste made the resulting mess particularly potent and foul. Consequently, a year after the program launch, the “raccoon wars” (Sadler, n.d.) were raging.

To keep raccoons out of the bins, people devised several deterrence strategies, such as fastening the bin lids with bungee cords or packing tape, and applying Lysol or Vicks VapoRub to the containers. These strategies resulted in varying degrees of success. While Toronto citizens embraced the Green Bin Program, with 90% participation from its inception (Sadler, n.d.), accepting raccoons’ responses was clearly more difficult, as evidenced by the city-sponsored literature on raccoon-proofing (City of Toronto, 2010b). As of 2007, the City of Toronto offered a $9 Green Bin latch lock, to “provide additional security against persistent pests like raccoons” (City of Toronto, 2010b), while the most recent North York Region Green Bin Newsletter (City of Toronto, 2006) advises how to “discourage four-legged creatures” from getting at the Green Bin contents.

In part, this essay considers the lives of urban raccoons—designated “trash animals”3 (Humane Society of the United States, 2009) by some—in order to investigate the negative cultural responses to these frequently maligned creatures.



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