Top Story: 31. August 2008
Full moon, Raccoon and Thunder with no Sound
By Editor in Chief, Jaakko Saari
"Say hey, isn't that tanuki?", I said to my wife and pointed up to the electric wire nearby our house.
It truly was tanuki, a Japanese raccoon that was wire-walking on the wire just above the street. The dark silhouette of the creature moved with amazing balance and smoothness. It's tail moved to balance it's slow but confident steps. For a moment I was afraid that the electric shock would catch it, but obviously the creature knew what it was doing. For a moment I could watch it's silhouette against the full moon. The sight was breathtaking.
You know the thunder you can see in August, a kind of silent thunder that makes no sound? As if raccoon and full moon wasn't enough, a thunder also came. Sky flashed rapidly, and then flashing stopped for a moment. It was entirely silent. The silhouette of wire walking raccoon became even more shocking in the thunder. A thought came to me that perhaps it was the thunder that made the creature restless and drove it to do it's acrobatic recreation.
Japan is probably the only country that one can see something like this, I thought.
There are many stories about Japanese raccoon, tanuki. It is often seen as a creature that possess somewhat magical powers. A friend told me about old story of tanuki after I told her what I had seen.
In the story a priest received a tea kettle with unusually beautiful shape. But then the night came, the hands, feet, head, and the tail came out of the kettle. Tanuki had disguised itself as a tea kettle. But the priest didn't like the raccoon, and sold it to a ragman. The ragman cared for the tanuki well. In return, tanuki performed special performance in show booth in which ragman took it. The ragman rose to wealth because many people came to see the raccoon.
Can you guess what performance the tanuki did? It was wire-walking.
Wire-walking tanuki is well depicted in Japanese childrens's books.
Now that I go out in night, even if I'd just visit in convenience store, I will look up to the wires. Maybe someday I can see this mysterious creature once again.
I wish it's doing well, where-ever it is now.
