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Pretty Sure the Citi Field Raccoon Was a Rat
By Matt Schultz
Published:
This video is making the rounds. I don’t like it:
Everyone’s saying this is a raccoon hand. I guess that makes sense. It feels better to live in that assumption. Everyone likes raccoons. I like them. I wouldn’t call them a gross animal by any means. But when I first saw this video, I assumed I was looking at the hand of a rat. Some sort of DNA-morphed rat that evolved bigger, human-like hands to grab at trash. Now that I’m typing it out here, I am kind of convincing myself of this again. Let’s think this through:
Raccoons have human-ish hands, true, but do they live underground like this? Could a raccoon survive beneath this concrete walkway? Is worming into this little crevice a raccoon thing to do? This seems more like rat behavior. Rats are always wriggling around in cracks and holes and walls and squeezing their way in and out of tight spots. I don’t think raccoons do that. I’m no expert, but I feel like I would’ve heard about this before, if raccoons were acting like rats.
Raccoons do climb. That I’m sure of. I’ve seen many a raccoon scaling trees in my day. I saw one fairly recently in my backyard. Sometime in the spring. It was a big moment in my house. Me and Kirsten and the dog all gathered around the window so stare at the raccoon in the tree. The dog was barking a ton. The raccoon’s eyes were glowing at us in the motion sensor back patio light. I took a bunch of bad pictures. Let me see if I can find any.
Found them:
Now that’s raccoon stuff. Being up in a tree makes sense. Being underground at a baseball game in a crowded city does not. That’s rat all the way. And we all know New York is a city infested with rats. It’s a filthy city overrun by disgusting, disease-carrying vermin, and it’s only fitting that the Mets — a team that is the literalization of garbage — is being overtaken by such repulsive pests. That is what’s happening here. That was a rat. Had to be.
All that to say, I think the internet’s response to this “raccoon” video is wrong. This isn’t an adorable moment. This isn’t the possum nesting in the A’s broadcast booth. This isn’t the very athletic raccoon running around the Union game. This isn’t the raccoon in my tree staring at my dog. Those were great. That’s all good stuff. This video shows something much worse.
This video shows a big-ass vermin carrying leptospirosis and salmonella and who knows what else clawing at a pile of scraps next to Mets’ fans feet. It’s unpleasant to look at. Unsettling. Vile, even. Just like the product on the field.
In conclusion, I say we all get on the same page here and dunk on the Mets for their disgusting season and their disgusting, rat-infested ballpark. Let me know where we land. Thanks.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com