ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the unruly raccoons and pesky possums that move into urban areas and set up residence in early childhood centres in Canada and Australia breach proximate comfort zones and unsettle power relations. It details the cultural, species, and geographical specificities of both sets of urban-child-native-wildlife-residential assemblages. The chapter traces the spectrum of mixed, awkward, and discomforting effects that these similar but not exactly the same assemblages produce—at least for the adults and children involved. It highlights the ethical tensions and complexities that are thrown up when children cohabit with native wildlife in the urban contact zone. In indigenous cosmologies, raccoons are closely related to humans and convey all sorts of important lessons about living well together. Settler-raccoon relations have been somewhat more fraught. The chapter articulates some similar settler child/urban wild-life assemblages and trajectories in North America and Australia without flattening out specificities and differences.
