A little something for my longtime friend  Skia, who's currently struggling with cancer and the loss of their 10+ years pet bunny. Which is a lot of shit happening at once.

Spirit animal racoon helps them loosen up this terribly unhealthy knot inside, while ghost bunny is assisting. Ghost bunny will also hand out tea to everyone when it's over.

On a sidenote, the German word for racoon is "Waschbär", which literally means "wash-bear". Because these animals tend to dip their food in water, which looks as if they're washing it. And I guess "bear" because their face looks similar enough (even though racoons belong to the family procyonidae, not ursidae).

While the English word "racoon" comes from the Algonquin/Powhatan word "aroughcun/arahkunem" which means something like "the one who scratches with hands".

There is also the new popular name now, "trash panda", as racoons have to adapt to survive in our record-speed shrinking animal kingdom. (So technically, we can also start calling polar bears "garbage island icy bois" if you wanna look up depressing photos.)

As a spirit animal symbol, racoons stand for a great sense of touching and feeling. They teach you how to trust and believe without seeing, for you don't have to see everything to understand everything. As a trickster whose cunning is equal to that of the coyote (by North American mythology), this spirit animal also wants to teach you tricks on how to solve problems you may have already given up on. And in the spiritual medicine wheel, the racoon represents the cleansing of the soul, as its teacher and guardian. A wash-bear. :)