Toronto raccoons protest City Hall: “We are not your trash pandas”
TORONTO — A gaze of raccoons congregated around Toronto City Hall’s dumpsters today in protest of what they say are, derogatory slurs of, “our fellow Procyon lotors and it will not be tolerated”, chittered representative Ricky the Raccoon, who argued that the ‘trash panda’ reference forces the four-legged mammals into an environment that denies the dignity of their identity.
“It’s diminishing our bandit-behaviors by assuming we’re just some cute, fluffy version of a panda.”
Due to the recent uptick in raccoon/human interaction caused by Toronto residents roaming the streets seeking #trashpanda selfies, raccoons wanted to protest this issue at city hall and send a message.
“Listen, you opposable-thumbed homo sapien morons, unlike pandas, we don’t crunch bamboo with our big fat paws on TikTok,” said Ricky. “We’re dexterous night bandits with intricate little paws and we’re viscous if you pet us,” he chittered on, “don’t get us wrong, we love trash, like really love trash, TRASH IS KING, but compare us to roly poly pandas? No thanks.”
Mayor John Tory stated this is an unbalanced statement as the city is not the source of the label #trashpanda and he needs to focus on his recent unruly hair narrative. “The demand from raccoons for us to implement robust training on how to open the city’s green bins does not meet their initial argument to stop being called trash pandas… please add lusciously haired Mayor,” said the lusciously haired Mayor.
The protest saw a group of raccoons waddle up the stairs to city hall, pausing to tip garbage bins yet to be animal-proofed. Ricky stated, “There are a good number of us here considering we started with three dozen and lost a few to a dumpster behind Tim Horton’s. It’s in the middle of the day and us being nocturnal and all… it’s still a pretty good turnout. Is that half a McDonald’s hashbrown?” and the interview ended there.
The organized rally turned to mayhem after the cute, fluffy lil’ trash pandas rolled about the stairs for the perfect photo op after a flock of seagulls dropped fries onto the steps of city hall.
