Ten-Minute Raccoon Butt Shelf

Carlos Alejandro says: "Check out Rich Roat of House Industries' side blog."

A raccoon shimmied up a tree in plain view of my living room windows, stuck his head in a squirrel hole and couldn't get it back out. I made a butt shelf because he was just hangin' there twisting and turning and I needed to think about how to get him free without getting rabies or something. Next morning I drilled holes with a spade bit, joined the holes with a reciporicating saw and then chiseled the rest off. He climbed in the the hole and I climbed down the ladder.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Cefeida

Next morning? Poor little guy, hanging there all night.

Of course I wasn’t there so I may be talking rubbish but couldn’t he have just put on some thick gloves and pushed the raccoon into the hole?

Can’t read the article to find out, the link doesn’t go there, as people have already mentioned.
jimh

@22: I understood it to say that he put up the shelf to help immediately, but didn’t figure out what else to do about it until the next morning when he used a drill and saw to enlarge the hole.
Takuan

thar baars in them parts?
Dewi Morgan

Truly one of the most Wonderful Things I’ve seen here in a long time. It has it all: humour, philanthropy, and a fluffy butt.
trr

Raccoon rescuers?
That’s one lucky raccoon.
Robert

I took this to mean that he put up the butt shelf immediately, and couldn’t figure out how to get the raccoon unstuck until the next morning (when he drilled some holes and enlarged the hole).
presterjohn

btw, before you classify all raccoons as cute and fuzzy, you ought to listen to the halloween episode of “This American Life” where a woman is attacked by a rabid racoon:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1268

Act One. The Hills Have Eyes.

Some of the scariest stories happen when fluffy, innocent creatures turn murderously evil. This American Life producer Alex Blumberg tells one such story, about a raccoon gone bad. (11 minutes)
Anonymous

I would have shaved it’s butt and painted a face on it.

Peace,
The Rev
GeekMan

Well done, sir.

With stories in the news every other week about some poor pet being abused by some sadistic owner, it’s nice to see that someone went out of their way to help a generally not-so-nice animal out of a jam.

Next time though, it might be a good idea to just let the SPCA handle it. Getting a rabies sequence sucks. ;-)
deckard68

“So the guy saw the raccoon butt out there, but didn’t get around to doing anything until the next day. Maybe the game was on?”

That’s *his* story, but the raccoon tells a different tale about what went on that night.
imdatguy42

As someone who worked for a long time in graphic design, I can tell you that without a doubt, this photo has been altered, probably with a program called Photoshop, by Adobe.

You can tell by the way the light angles off of the shelf, and the fuzziness about the fur.

In the biz, we call this “‘shopped”
Ray Maruwa

Ooh! I claim this as a band name.
Duffong

^^^ eeeew! raccoon butt secks!
hohum

THIS is truly a Wonderful Thing.
the_boy

Are there t-shirts yet?
arkizzle

P!ICTBTP
Drink!

(And please tell me that was posted with an awareness of the meme you are so stupendously paralleling.. otherwise: Ouch!)
morcheeba

Looks kinda like the nose of a camel. Are you sure it’s a raccoon butt?
Lauren O

@10: Y’know, sometimes it’s okay to unclench your butt and laugh for a change.

He can’t unclench his butt or he’ll fall out of the tree! We gotta build him a butt shelf!
timquinn

Looks like a Paul Doty project from Popular Science.
mdh

very Winnie the ‘Coon.
slain by an elf

This is anti-Darwininian. This fat-ass would have starved a little bit and then squeezed out. Give him time to think about changing his life-style.
Anonymous

How do you get to the actual article, from which the text is quoted?
Phikus

Good thing he didn’t make it a turtle shelf.
pecoto

HAHAHAHAH ….I love the silliness of nature. You should patent the Raccoon butt-shelf. Maybe they would package it with some oxy-clean and some shamwows…
Anonymous

So the tree gets to suffer for the raccoon’s stupidity? I would have been more impressed with a non-invasive method of attachment. Even a strap with a tension adjuster would have been sufficient, which I would hope someone who’s savvy enough to use drill bits and a ladder has.
De Anza

Oh.My.

I have been laughing for a half hour….hysterical..

Just thinking about some guy watching out his living room window, scratching his head…to come up with that…hahahaha…and then making it….

I can’t even read it over the phone to someone without cracking up….
The Lizardman

fantastic
greyc

omg that is fucking hilarious…
Sekino

That’s both funny and endearing. What a nice guy (and crafty!).
merreborn

“Ten-Minute Raccoon Butt Shelf”

I’m fairly confident that phrase had never been uttered before this incident.
bobhughes

is that all there is to it? the link leads to nothing but a blog entry about man vs. nature or something equally trite, and nothing about the photo that i could find.

was the raccoon stuck because he didnt have any leverage for his back legs until the shelf was added? did it eat baby squirrels? was it able to get back out, and was it able to turn around or did he back out? etc
Anonymous

Oh wow. Perfect opportunity to tickle a raccoon…of corse with the intention of getting it out.
Phikus

@7: Yeah, but if true Darwinism were in practice, you wouldn’t have been able to post this comment since you were slain by an elf. ;D

Pecoto@9: Now how much would you pay..?

Morcheeba@4: Actually, you’re right. They fit two camels in this tree.
fontgoddess

Hilarious, and much less gruesome than a lynched animal corpse to gaze at from the living room.
pfreeman

Y’know, you can buy butt shelves at Harbor Freight. I think they’re about $3.95 each in the raccoon/possum size.

(Not affiliated with Harbor Freight in any way, except as a happy butt shelf customer.)
Domomojo

@7 It is Darwinian because now this raccoon will live on to produce offspring in symbiotic relationships with butt shelf building humans.
Bloodboiler

Only one hour of today has passed, and my day is already made.

If only more people were willing to build butt shelves for those in need of one.
Tommy

@10: Y’know, sometimes it’s okay to unclench your butt and laugh for a change.
Antinous / Moderator

Wow. You actually made me feel sorry for a raccoon. That takes work.
Casual_Casualty

@ #10
You are joking right?
Trees are incredibly resilient… My parents have a chain-link fence lined with trees growing around it.
I am a tree-hugging animal-lover (don’t be gross), and I think this guy made the right choice: what was the simplest thing you can do to help this raccoon without harming him. Sure maybe in retrospect there are are better solutions to all problems, but usually it takes longer to think of the best solution then it does to just pick one and roll with it to get the job done.
Anonymous

So, I have this great idea: Nine-Minute Raccoon Butt Shelf.
JIMWICh

Slack.

In the form of a Ten-Minute Raccoon Butt Shelf.

Praise Bob! EEyyii-EEyyii-EEyyii-EEyyii
Teller

Thanks, asshat. Thanks a lot.

- The squirrel
doggo

@25 “generally not-so-nice animal”!? How dast you?!

Raccoons are wonderful creatures. Cute and fuzzy and very friendly.

But seriously, they are wonderful creatures. It’s not their fault people leave all this free food around in easy-to-open containers.

Pffft! Next you’ll be dissing bears…
Glossolalia Black

I was always the kid who was bummed out while watching documentaries, when the baby animal in the wild lost its mama and would die.

I was always, “Dude, it’s a rare pygmy whateverthehell, can’t you bottle feed it for a little while and bring it to a zoo or something?” But apparently there’s a reason you can’t, something like a Nature-Based Prime Directive that those documentary people have to follow.

However, in the case of very present raccoons in pain, I would have said, “Fuck the Prime Directive,” too.
presterjohn

ok, I get to tell my raccoon story again.

midnight, I go for a walk.

I hear a wailing sound echoing off the houses across the street. Sounds like a turkey in heat or something. It turns out to be a raccoon trapped in a storm drain less than 3 meters from where I’m standing.

I go back to my garage and get a broom. It isn’t long enough, and he hisses at me.

I happen to have a long piece of black bamboo I cut from somewhere I own ;)

It is long enough. I lower it down and leave it in the drain and back off.

The raccooon climbed out. Looked at me nonchanlantly without so much as a thank you, and wandered off.

We, the raccoon rescuers, darwinian interventionists, are a rare and noble group. Or something.
arborman

The funniest phrase in that whole description is ‘Next morning’.

So the guy saw the raccoon butt out there, but didn’t get around to doing anything until the next day. Maybe the game was on?