Shawi, the Trash Panda God

 Shawi is the Choctaw name for the raccoon (Procyon lotor),  a ring-tailed species of mammalian bandit.

Raccoon in its family tree.

I've known a bunch of them well. And I owe the trash pandas a blog post.

The Trash Panda Family Tree 
(Mandatory Mammal Speciation Lecture)

Without belaboring the biology more than it's worth (which for me is a lot), raccoons are classified by taxonomists in the family Procyonidae, which they share with coatis, ringtails, kinkajous, and eleven other species.

Giant pandas, on the other hand,  are in the same taxonomic family with as bears, black bears, brown bears, polar bears, big bears, little bears, and the bear that watched the still while Lord Buckley went into town to vote

Raccoons were in fact long thought to be related to bears. (The German name for raccoon means "washing bear.") But truth is, raccoons are more closely related genetically to weasels, skunks, badgers, and otters than they are to bears. Collectively, they are all classified in the same superfamily Musteloidea. In practical terms, this means that coons are a bitch to field dress, musk glands and all.

Red Panda in its family tree

However, there is another family of animals in the musteloid superfamily, the Ailluridae, that lends some credence to the "trash panda" handle for raccoons. There is only one species of aillurid, the red panda (Aillurus fulgens). There's still some debate about whether red pandas and giant pandas are in fact related, but the DNA evidence strongly suggests that they aren't any more closely related than raccoons and black bears. The only thing they really share with giant pandas is their sesamoid thumbs, which presumably evolved independently.

Regardless, "trash panda" works for our devious procyonid buddies, and I've belabored all I'm gonna belabor about this particularly trivial point.

You Gotta Hand It To 'Em

One of the most distinctive things about shawi are their hand-like forepaws. Raccoons have elongated fingers, five per paw. They don't have opposable thumbs like humans and other primates, but that doesn't slow them down much.

Raccoon Influencer
Posting to Instagram

Giant Pandas use an elongated sesamoid bone as their functional "thumb" for grasping and stripping the leaves off giant bamboo, which makes up their entire diet. Raccoons will eat almost anything including the leftover Chinese carry-out that you threw in the trash last night, and while that might have included bamboo shoots, shawi are really fonder of crawfish.

Raccoons are intelligent creatures. Their exceptional problem-solving skills help explain how they can get into trash cans so easily. Testing shows that shawi have IQs comparable to monkeys. 

They can figure out puzzles. Latches are a specialty, which is a pretty good specialty if your livelihood depends on raiding trash cans and escaping Havahart traps. 

Coons can work out multiple solutions to a problem, and they remember them. Unlike a lot of humans, when a "solution" stops working, raccoons quit trying it and move on to a new approach. 

Couple those smarts with manual dexterity, and you have either a monumental nuisance pest or a fascinating visitor.  Or both.

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness?

 He called me vermin! She called me rodent!

Raccoons are famous for "washing" their food. English colonists mashed up the name "raccoon" from the Algonquian aroughcun, derived from a root meaning "the one who rubs, scrubs, and scratches with his hands." Germans call them Washbären. For the record, the French call 'em "washing rats" (ratons laveurs). Maybe French raccoons are a smaller than German raccoons, but rat or not, it doesn't stop folks from eating them. 

Relax, I'm not gonna turn this into a food blog article. Promise. Suffice to say "coon and collards" is traditional among bushmeat consumers in the Southeast, but if you want to be upscale, there's always raccoon quiche. (Yes, I'm gagging, too. Personally, I'm not tossing anything on the barbeque that might have been washing its hands in a vat of Baylisascaris.) Your mileage may vary.

Raccoons are often observed "washing" their food. And it makes sense -- they got it out of a trash can, right? But they also poop in the same water, so we can't attribute all that scrubbing to simple food prep. What's up? 

Raccoons' amazing hands are incredibly sensitive: two-thirds of the sensory cortex in a shawi brain is devoted to tactile processing. And those hands have ten times as many sensory receptors as a human hand! But raccoons walk on their hands, so they wind up with calluses. They're not "washing" the food so much as softening their skin so they can feel the food more effectively. Or so they say. Why coons can't use Cornhuskers Lotion is beyond me, but it's conveniently self-referential.

So What's This Godliness Stuff?

Shawi was a trickster spirit in many Native American traditions. In a lesser-god-of-convenience role, the Choctaws' raccoons became the spirits who stole the toys of naughty children who didn't put their playthings away. Modern raccoons continue this duty. Like other Native American trickster gods -- Coyote being the best known --  shawi's intelligence, problem-solving skills, and cleverness factor into the myths. 

Unlike Choctaw gods like Nalusa Falaya and other rather demonic woods spirits, Shawi wasn't there to terrify but to amuse people, steal kids' toys, and raid trash cans. Just like the real-life raccoon.

So Shawi is my spiritual animal. Dark rings around the eyes? Check. Stays up all night? Check. Eats garbage? Check. Possibly rabid? Check, that's me!