They lurk in the shadows — growing in numbers — striking at will — drawing on their heritage from the darkest days of the Third Reich — Nazi Raccoons on the March!
The story begins in 1934, when a breeder asked the Reich Forestry Office, then led by future top Hitler aide Hermann Göring, for permission to release the masked-faced mammals to “enrich the local fauna” outside Kassel, a small city north of Frankfurt.
“Raccoon pelts were a popular trophy for hunters back then,” biologist Ulf Hohmann said. “They were also raised for their fur at special farms” after they were imported from North America early last century.
Seventy years on, the furry critters are now as populous in some areas of Germany as in the major urban centers of North America — a whopping one per hectare (2.5 acres), Hohmann said.
[…] Since their introduction during the Third Reich, raccoons can trace their gradual conquest of Europe back to two other moments in history.
As Allied bombs rained over Berlin at the end of World War II, one struck a fur breeding farm, giving the raccoons there the opportunity to escape into the wild. They never looked back. And in the 1960s, NATO soldiers freed the raccoons they used as mascots after leaving their base in France, setting off a baby boom.
Hohmann says that in the coming years, raccoons are expected to spread to even more European cities.
I just find this really amusing.