Oh, hey. Hi. It's your neighbor who just needs a couple tips on how to start weightlifting real quick.

Alli Ward, I'm back with an episode of Oligies that honestly, I know it's up. You squealed when you saw it.

I get it. You said, wow, the holiday times aren't going to be magical. Someone did get me a present.

There is joy to the world. Let's talk about eating garbage. Raccoons. Okay. Wow. So these critters,

they have these tiny, alive doll hands and ample bedonks and they wear carnival cat burglar

disguises. They got striped goth tails. What are they? Are they taking over the world? Why do we love

them so much? And what can we learn from them? A lot. Okay. And we're going to do it via the world's

most sought after raccoon expert who studied suology and genetics for undergrad and psychology

for her masters at the University of Alberta. Kind of a rare combination. She now is a York

University psychology professor and an animal behaviorist. She studied all manner of animals

from the reproductive and ecology of marmots naturally to rhino and elephant conservation,

red wolf sperm and anxiety in orphaned primates. But the world relies on her, frankly, as an animal

behaviorist and a Toronto resident to field questions about that thing in your backyard,

treating your koi pond like a sizzler. And she served as the on-call behaviorist at the

Toronto Zoo for literal decades. And if there is a well-made documentary about raccoons,

they have probably interviewed her first. Just Google Recoon Nation if you don't believe me.

You're welcome. Also, thank you to patrons for supporting the show for as little as a dollar a month.

You send in questions there. It's at patreon.com-ologies. Thanks to everyone who passes episodes

onto friends and foes and family and who subscribes and follows and rates and reviews. Those really

keep it up in the charts so that people find it. I read your reviews every single one of them

every week and they are the singular pillar of my self-esteem. Like this one from Emma Garsh,

who wrote, The Genius Associate at Staples printed so many things for me and is studying to be

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