Baby Raccoons…America’s Favorite Pet
According to this old advertisement, raccoons are/were “one of America’s favorite pets, has always been and still is.”
Color me skeptic, but has this ever been the case? I mean, I’ve never heard my parents waxing wistfully over bygone days of yore when they would while away the late summer afternoons doing clumsy childish cartwheels on the freshly cut grass in the shade of the cedar shake gazebo of the local park with their bestest friend in the whole wide world….their pet raccoon.
Is it just me, or does this ad seem to come from some alternate parallel dimension of reality where cuddling with the wild animal of your choice was considered just a normal part of childhood?
Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me. Could it be that the reason I sometimes feel so confused and bewildered about the world around me is because I simply never had the opportunity to contract a raging case of incurable rabies as a child?
I suddenly feel so deprived…
What year is the ad from? Depending on the year, $29.95 could be an expensive pet.
There was a coonskin cap fad in the mid-fifties. Maybe a raccoon breeder got caught in the bust and this ad was his desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy.
This was an advert from 1972. I tried to find out if the pet shop might still be in business. I came close, finding several pet stores in operation in the zip code, but could not confirm with any certainty that the pet shop in question still had its doors open.