Sometime in the 1990s I picked up a slightly-too-small raccoon coat at Goodwill. It spent most of its time in the closet because it didn’t fit well and because it was … fur.

But seven years ago I traded that coat in on one that was actually big enough, which I started to wear whenever the weather got really cold.

I was concerned that my fur coat would draw negative reactions – though not concerned enough to not wear it!

Lots of people have commented on the coat. But to my surprise, except for the rather dim co-worker who raked me down for wearing “exotic fur” *, the comments have been 100% positive!

They’re mostly variations on “That looks warm” or “That’s a nice jacket”. (Language drift seems to be in action here – even though the coat is ankle-length people almost always call it a “jacket”. Fascinating!)

So I’ve met minimal hostility to fur out there. Which is a good thing – in really cold weather, fur or sheepskin are the only things I’ve worn that actually kept me warm.

And I strongly suspect that the “wonderful synthetic alternatives” we’re encouraged to wear have a big ecological cost. They are, after all, oil that’s been heavily processed. (But that’s another post!)

In the meantime I’m wearing my raccoon coat and staying warm even when it goes down below -30!

…

* I’m writing in Toronto, Canada where raccoons are not exotic. They’re vermin. Very successful vermin.

They’ve adapted beautifully to the urban environment and contribute to it by vandalizing garbage cans, tearing up gardens, defecating on roofs, mating noisily under my bedroom window in the middle of the night and occasionally attacking pets and people.

People tell me their raccoon stories when I’m wearing the coat, and so far they’ve all been horror stories.

For example, a gentleman I talked with this morning as we trudged through the snow told me of how he had to get a series of rabies shots because a raccoon bit him. He was sitting in his garden one afternoon when a raccoon jumped up on the bench beside him. He was talking on the phone and thought it was his cat, so he reached down and patted it.

Chomp!

On the whole, I prefer my raccoons as coats.