Harry Cheadle
Vice
In the days before online video, a long-bearded man dancing with his
pet raccoon to Aretha Franklin on his porch in rural Tennessee would
have gone unnoticed, just one weird blissful moment in a world full of
them. But Mark “Coonrippy” Brown’s clip (above) of him dancing with his
four-legged companion Gunshow has gone viral viral since he
posted it in July 2012, racking up more than 1 million views on YouTube
and attracting so much attention it was featured on The Tonight Show and Good Morning America, which are like YouTube for old people.
It got some not-so-welcome attention, however—according to Coonrippy,
the video became so popular that the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency
(TWRA) decided to step in and confiscate his raccoon,
Rebekah, in late July. (By this time, Gunshow had gone on to that great
hollow tree in the sky, but Coonrippy had a new raccoon pet.) Rebakah
was taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center, even though arguably all
she needed to be “rehabilitated” from was having a decent life as part
of a family. She even got to take showers:
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