This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Every November, Americans gather together to celebrate important traditions.

Shopping for door buster deals on 72-inch TVs, watching Snoopy balloons float down 6th Avenue,

and we eat a lot of food.

Lots of food means lots of food waste. And so after your Thanksgiving, you might find yourself hosting an unwanted second gathering. Raccoons, rummaging

in your garbage for discarded turkey and uneaten yams. Today we're presenting a remixed all-time

favorite story we ran for Thanksgiving 2018.

It's about our friendly neighbors up north and their attempt to defend themselves from an invading army of trash pandas.

Enjoy.

The city of Toronto has a special relationship with raccoons, or at least they think they do.

We're not the only city with raccoons, but we often act like we are.

We like to think Toronto is the raccoon capital of the world, and we're strangely proud of that distinction,

but we really have no data to back it up.

This is Amy Dempsey, a reporter for the Toronto Star.

Do we have more raccoons than, say, Chicago or Vancouver?

Well, we don't actually know.

You can't count urban raccoons.

They're all over the place.

But who needs data when you can feel it in your heart?

A few years ago, when a raccoon died on Young Street,

Trontonians named him Conrad and built a vigil around his body with flowers and a framed photo and cards.

So if science ever disproves this idea of Toronto as Raccoon Nation,

...