We all desperately need a news story that will raise our spirits and make us feel good. Last week we had just such a story, except it happened to be about raising spirits and then feeling bad. The best story of the week was the report that a raccoon broke into a liquor store in Virginia, leaving a trail of broken spirits that broke his spirit. The raccoon binged on rum, vodka, eggnog, moonshine, and peanut butter whiskey, producing a result that many of us know all too well.
While we don’t have confirmation of the raccoon’s gender, for the sake of argument we’ll refer to it as a “he.” He got drunk, then he got sick, and while he had the good sense to rush to the bathroom, he ultimately ended up passed out face down on the floor next to the commode
It’s the kind of raccoon interest news story we need more of, especially because it has a happy ending. The raccoon’s escapade set off the security alarms, bringing first police and then animal control 911 to the scene. He was taken not to jail but to a shelter, and after a hangover lasting approximately an hour and a half (!) was released upon his own recognizance back into the wild, chastened but probably no wiser.
The news reports leave inquiring minds with more questions than answers. How did the raccoon break in? Did he target the store because it had liquor or was that an unexpected surprise? Can there be such a thing as an expected surprise? What was his favorite spirit?
Then there are more substantive questions. Is peanut butter whiskey actually a thing? Smooth or crunchy? Skippy or Jif? What is the raccoon’s secret for curing a hangover? And, for fans of alternative history, what if Otis, the town drunk in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, had been a raccoon? How would Barney Fife, Floyd the barber, and Goober have dealt with that plot twist?
I’m as much a sucker for a good drunk raccoon story as the next guy, but this particular story was personal for me.
The raccoon episode took place in Ashland, Virginia, the town where I went to college (Randolph-Macon) and then lived and worked after college. I don’t know that I ever crossed paths with this particular raccoon, but I have been to that very liquor store, or at least its previous location.
On my 21st birthday my friends celebrated the occasion not by singing “Happy Birthday” but by asking “Will you buy me booze?” My first legal alcohol purchase took place at the Ashland ABC store. The old location was next door to the local newspaper office, and so I walked past it nearly every week after late nights laying out the college newspaper. I never noticed any nocturnal critters running through the empty store.
In case you are wondering what a drunken raccoon in a liquor store has to do with college admission, other than taking place in a college town, at some (probably tenuous) level it is a case study in managing reputation and brand as well as how first impressions can impact perceptions.
I remember a trip with a couple of counselor friends to visit several college campuses. One of the visits was to one of the nation’s best liberal-arts colleges. The campus was impressive and beautiful, but during a three-hour visit we never saw a single person talking to another human being, and that became our snap judgment on the institution’s culture and sense of community. At another campus on the same trip, one of my colleagues noticed a condom lying on the floor during our tour of a residence hall, and henceforth that became her word association answer for that university. Obviously both of those first impressions could have been totally off-base.
In the aftermath of this story, many will worry about what this will do to the reputation of raccoons as a species. Raccoons are often characterized as criminals because of the bandit masks around their eyes and their propensity for rummaging through trash cans. Legendary hunter Elmer Fudd would have described them as “wascally” (and would also have called them “waccoons”). Will this news story reinforce that image or soften it, making them more empathetic and lovable?
As a former Ashland resident, I am concerned about how the raccoon in the liquor store will impact the town’s brand. I love small towns, but small towns are an endangered species across America, struggling to carve out a distinctive identity that will enable them to survive (the same is true of small colleges).
Ashland has navigated that landscape better than most. It is a bedroom community for its larger neighbor Richmond, but Ashland has maintained its small-town feel through annual events like its “Olde Time Holiday Parade” and a community variety show. It also benefits from being a college town and from the fact that it is located adjacent to Interstate 95 and that the main north-south Amtrak route bisects Railroad Avenue, one of Ashland’s two main streets along with England Street, which doesn’t connect Ashland with England. The newest addition to Ashland’s downtown is a statue of Secretariat, the greatest race horse ever who was born a few miles outside the town. Ashland’s greatest burden is its own presumption, describing itself as the “Center of the Universe.”
So is there a possibility that the “drunk raccoon in the liquor store” narrative becomes what Ashland is known for? The story got national publicity, including coverage by Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. How many small towns would die for that kind of publicity?
I hope that Ashland will not shy away from its “brush with greatness” but rather embrace the raccoon story. The animal protection program has already raised more than $150,000 from the sales of drunk raccoon-themed swag. There are two simple steps I hope Ashland will consider. One is to revise the town motto. “Center of the Universe” is a hard claim to live up to, but there is now ample evidence for Ashland’s claim as “Drunken Raccoon Center of the Universe.”
Even better, the town should pair the Secretariat statue with a companion statue featuring a drunken raccoon passed out face down next to a toilet. That would not only turn Ashland into a tourist destination, but might increase East Coast train travel enough to make Amtrak profitable.