Spotlight: Red Raccoons
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 23rd, 2010
The International Cryptozoology Museum has on exhibition a red raccoon, presently being displayed in its front window. This is actually a rare animal, a special color phase of the normal raccoon. They are infrequently seen and less often caught, in the wild. Seeing one is less common than viewing a black squirrel.
Photographer: Hillary Oppmann.
This red-phase raccoon was spotted during the Summer of 2009, in the River Gorge, at the Oak Savanna restoration area in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Red phase raccoons are a naturally-occurring uncommon color variant — with orangish or yellowish fur instead of the usual gray and black and white. These raccoons are also referred to as “rufous-phase” or “melanistic” raccoons.
Mounts of these raccoons are likewise scarce.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
There’s a nice example of a mounted light-phase raccoon at the Klondike National Park in Skagway, AK, appropriately enough on display at the historical restoration of 1898 Gold Rush Era Mascot Saloon.
I live in Western Kentucky. And last fall we had a female that would come up to the porch and eat cat food. She was a beautiful dark red. And was obvious that she had a litter of young. She also seemed to be a bit more aggressive than the normal raccoon.