Linnaeus's royal raccoon

[Peter D. Tillman]

This is the 300th anniversary of Carl Linnaeus's birth, so Nature gave
him a memorial issue on March 15, including a very entertaining story of
his pet raccoon, Sjupp.

Sjupp was a gift from King Adolf Fredrik [1] around 1740; he was
imported from New Sweden, a colony on the Delaware river in North
America. Linnaeus observed that "what he liked best were eggs, almonds,
raisins, sugared cakes, sugar and fruit" -- and he wasn't shy about
asking for them, frisking any visitor for treats, no doubt a startling
experience, as it was for Linnaeus's gardener, who panicked at Sjupp's
demands, and suffered ever after: "Every time he smelt him [the
gardener], [Sjupp] began making a noise like a seagull, a sign that he
was extremely angry," Linnaeus reported. He had a watercolor of Sjupp
hung in his summerhouse.

Sjupp met a sad end in the jaws of a dog in 1747. Linnaeus then
dissected poor Sjupp, and published his description later in 1747.

Definitely worth reading next time you're at the library, or online if
you have access to the Nature site (it's not in the free area).

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman

[1] --later known as "the king who ate himself to death", after he ate
14 desserts and then died, in 1771.

[Jo Schaper]

If any of you are old enough to have read the book Rascal by Sterling
North (an excellent, but fairly non-PC story of a boy, his raccoon, and
the year the boy built a canoe in the living room) you will recall that
Rascal loved strawberry pop, and would frisk visitors for the same, too.
Rascal liking eggs got him in dutch with the local farmers--a propensity
for that treat earned Rascal a chickenwire cage in the back yard, which
the first person narrator said pacified the farmers, but didn't bother
the raccoon one whit, since he had already mastered screen doors.

I read that story in fourth grade and have been rooting for the raccoons
ever since.

[crushdbox]

very nice;)))
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<<<<
at first I was surprised, honestly

[Aidan Karley]

In article
<Tillman-56D0D3...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>, Peter

D. Tillman wrote:
> [1] --later known as "the king who ate himself to death", after he ate
> 14 desserts and then died, in 1771.
>

Before or after a surfeit of lampreys?
(Thats the gastronomic termination of one of the bigger British
robber barons - a Henry, I think.)
--
Aidan Karley, FGS,
Aberdeen, Scotland
A light wave is more like a crime wave than a water wave.