Toronto Mayor Rob Ford does not like raccoons. Earlier this month he came out and said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis city has a serious raccoon problem. I\u2019ve had some standoffs with some raccoons, seriously. I\u2019m a big guy, powerful, a football player, and when I holler the trees shake, but the friggin\u2019 raccoons, they just look at you. They\u2019re not scared anymore. It\u2019s a severe problem we\u2019re having in this great city, and it\u2019s only getting worse. They\u2019re getting braver and braver by the day. I\u2019m not a big raccoon fan, I\u2019ll tell you that straight up. We have to kill them.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

As I have a personal relationship from the Mayor stretching back to our college days drinking together, he\u2019s consented to give me a short interview exploring his feelings about the raccoon.<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cRob, can you tell me about your most powerful raccoon experiences?<\/p>\n

Rob: \u201c When I was in grade seven a raccoon climbed the fence and tried to enter into our family pool area to steal some food. Biggest mistake that raccoon ever made. Remember, I was drinking and getting high in those days, and when I saw that raccoon, I saw red, it was like I protecting the QB, you know? I started to chuck rocks at him, and I think the third one hit him square in the face, knocking him out. He was bleeding, and it was obvious that the merciful thing to do was kill him, so I bashed his head in with the ghetto blaster. It was messier than I would have thought, and one of the girls there, one that I liked, started to scream and cry and I knew getting some with her wasn\u2019t going to be easy that night, and it was then that I realized the city had a really serious raccoon problem.<\/p>\n

About a year later, and this lasted most of high school, I started to have these debilitating raccoon nightmares. Had to drop all my math and science and economic and history courses, the stress was so bad. I don\u2019t want to talk too much about it, but it was like I was the last man on earth and all around me were these predatory ghost-raccoons trying to steal my stuff and eat my manhood. There was a bed-wetting issue for a while. You know, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to admit that before, but rehab has taught me to be honest, so yeah, I wet my bed up until I was 18 and I\u2019m not ashamed of it. It\u2019s the fault of the raccoons, my fucking spirit enemy.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

You might imagine how I hated them after all the years of nightmares and boring immersion therapy, and so Doug and I took it upon ourselves to just kill as many as we could. Using golf clubs mostly, we killed the hell out of them. We were athletes and we just felt compelled to win, you know? It was a, what do you call it? A holy war thing. We used to make necklaces out of their little fingers and then wear them to school dances. I guess you could say I\u2019ve always had a special relationship with the raccoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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