Ballard: it's one of the only north Seattle neighborhoods vaguely affordable to buy in. Lots of young families. Try to ignore the meth heads camping next to the Burke Gilman and industrial areas. (I live in Ballard.)
>it's one of the only north Seattle neighborhoods vaguely affordable to buy in
Most north Seattle neighborhoods north of Ballard are more affordable to buy in than Ballard. Exceptions being North Beach / Blue Ridge, Windermere, Laurelhurst and similar.
I can’t tell if this is a ‘whoosh’ over my head or what, but saying Laurelhurst is more affordable than just about anywhere besides Medina is wild. They literally had enough sway to have the hospital reroute their flights (it was actually a children’s hospital and they got enough flack about it only this year did they relent [0]).
Also locally - Seattle - local agencies are celebrating, and sometimes incorporating him into their business, including city sanitation departments spicing up pro social sanitation messages about using garbage cans, claiming Jimothy would want it that way. Some of these messages make less obvious sense than others, IMO.
Are you complaining about people helping a raccoon? The Internet hype is a bit much but why are you framing it like this raccoon should have died years ago.
When I lived in Chicago I'd see rats and cats eating cat food left out alongside each other. I'm not against helping wild animals as long as it doesn't come with a rat infestation issue.
It doesn't. You already have a rat infestation issue. This doesn't cause it or further it. You think that little handful of kibble compares to the free calories available in an entire dumpster full of chicago deep dish pizza scrap that sits out in the open air day in day out?
Feeding stray cats and feeding birds are very different things, pretty much at odds with each other. If a stray cat is fed, birds have a more difficult time surviving.
I do this too, but it's important to make sure you're either fully adopting them to keep them inside and care for medical issues, or at least make sure they get neutered/spayed before they're let out again if they can't live indoors. Stray cats are terrible for the local ecology- just feeding them without taking those steps is definitely harmful. In my town you can call animal control for strays and they'll clip the ears so you can see that they can't reproduce and are safe to leave out.
I'd also be hesitant to give people the idea that racoons are safe to interact with, even stray cats can be dangerous, but racoons can do much more damage. I feel like the ideal situation is they capture him and find an animal sanctuary away from the public. Wild animals with genetic issues don't usually live a great life
Or you can just toss some food out and call it a day
This ideology that all stray animals need to be siphoned up and neutered on the spot is bizarre to me. Sure there is a balance to be struck as you can't have a hundred thousand cats in a small area, but this idea that stray cats and dogs are simply not allowed to exist and reproduce naturally is insane.
Have you ever lived in a place where there aren’t effective control efforts?
These programs aren’t about people feeling good about themselves. The middle ground you suggest IS neutering and spaying all the animals you can find. The more extreme end of control is culls. It isn’t something you can ignore without pretty serious second order effects.
It ends up being pretty grim for the animals and sometimes humans too when stray population isn’t controlled. I’m talking about the conditions these animals end up enduring, not the culling which is its own grim process.
As someone who had to help get a stray cat population under control the ugly way (limited budget in a developing country), I would much rather that strays get fixed before it gets there.
I live in New Zealand, where they are big efforts to cull non-native wildlife, including all mammalian predators. There are traplines through the woods here, and I remember seeing a Department of Conservation visitor centre with a diorama of stray cats being killed by a kill trap.
Locally we've got an overpopulation of goats, and apparently they're going to start shooting them from helicopters.
They also drop a poison bait called 1080 that kills mammals from helicopters in remote regions here.
Domestic cats and dogs are not native to the Americas. They are pets or work animals. The cats should be adopted if possible and made indoor cats or neutered to keep their invasive population down. Dogs too, you need to treat feral dogs as wild and excellent rabies spreaders.
You do you, but I'd ask in earnest people please don't. Cats are invasive to the US and wreak havoc on local wildlife populations. Where I live, so many people feed the ferals that they've become an overpopulated menace.
it’ll probably end up badly, not because someone fed a raccoon, but because someone halfway across the planet will develop an unreasonable relationship with this wild animal.
Homeowners are generally legally liable for anything that occurs on their property, especially if it can affect neighbouring properties to any provable extent.
There are carveouts and exemptions, but that isn’t a magical deflector shield.
So it doesn’t take a huge imagination to see how it could have negative externalities.
You are allowed to not have a fence at all if you so choose, assuming an HOA isn’t telling you otherwise. Property owners have no liability for wild animals transiting their property. If you are keeping pets and they get out I would assume the homeowner has some liability, but a wild raccoon is not any homeowner’s responsibility.
You're not liable if the animal is just passing through but if you're feeding the wildlife (actively or just have a bunch of open trash cans) and the wildlife decides to do wildlife things to your guests, you certainly could be liable.
A hole in a fence is kind of a middle area. Did you create the hole for the raccoon to enter your property easier or for it to leave easier? Rabbits sometimes hang out in my backyard to eat grass and my dogs love to chase them. They usually enter and exit under the fence in the same spot (near my neighbor's vegetable garden) but that spot is near the backdoor and they are sometimes trapped if they are in the middle of the yard or further back (they always escape but there's been a few close calls). I made a small hole at the opposite end of the yard for them to escape easier. But if I knew a critter was struggling to get into my yard, I definitely wouldn't make it easier for them.
This is a textbook example of a logical fallacy called "poisoning the well", implying that because a user has a crass username that their opinions do not deserve to be treated with the same value as someone who posts under their feasibly real world name.
To be rational, you should take opinions as written, not considering the writer, and debate them on their merits alone.
Not that their opinion was rational, as we have not conclusively proved the existence of the soul. That being said, the negative emphasis of your reply probably deserved a rude comeback.
Gruff, annoyed responses to people enjoying a mutated racoon is not acceptable behavior. It's weird.
In my opinion, taking offense at whimsy is weak sauce and deserves to be replied to as such.
I realize you can say that my opinion doesn't matter since my username is bizarroland, and I do come from a strange place, but that's still my opinion and I'll stand by it.
You might enjoy this satire [0], lengthily titled: "I’m Jimothy, the Short-Spined Raccoon Who Has Taken the Internet by Storm, and the Collective Weight of Your Adoration Is Breaking My Already-Compromised Back"
Well it also opens passageways for other ground-dwelling animals as well, which is a good thing. I believe in the UK and other places where hedgehogs are native it’s somewhat common for people to cut small holes in their fences so they can get around.
I met someone from Seattle just yesterday who had not heard of it. I think anyone who doesn't live on the internet can be forgiven for not following this story.
The Trump admin opted to make some stupid debacle about this on social media recently so it’s very possible to be aware of it outside of the Seattle sphere.
Don't want to rain on the parade of something people like but this kind of title tells me nothing and I detest it. It tells me the thing is going to die like any other animal and that's the circle of life yet it wants to create engagement. Please stop publishing like this.
Tell me why the spinal condition is important. Tell me why I need to read this article because of [magic?]. Now I know nothing and don't like it.
It’s absolutely wild how Jimothy has taken over the internet. This is easily the most media attention anyone/anything from Ballard has ever gotten.
Also; Free Ballard! End the century of Seattle tyranny! https://www.seattle.gov/city-archives/exhibits-and-education... (JK, mostly)
Ballard: it's one of the only north Seattle neighborhoods vaguely affordable to buy in. Lots of young families. Try to ignore the meth heads camping next to the Burke Gilman and industrial areas. (I live in Ballard.)
>it's one of the only north Seattle neighborhoods vaguely affordable to buy in
Most north Seattle neighborhoods north of Ballard are more affordable to buy in than Ballard. Exceptions being North Beach / Blue Ridge, Windermere, Laurelhurst and similar.
> Laurelhurst
I can’t tell if this is a ‘whoosh’ over my head or what, but saying Laurelhurst is more affordable than just about anywhere besides Medina is wild. They literally had enough sway to have the hospital reroute their flights (it was actually a children’s hospital and they got enough flack about it only this year did they relent [0]).
[0] https://www.kuow.org/health-care/2026-05-08/seattle-children...
GP is listing it under exceptions to affordability.
Attempt to re-read what I wrote.
Perhaps now you can better relate to the Laurelhurst residents, they also experienced a whooshing over their heads.
As a fellow Ballard home owner I have to say that anyone who thinks Ballard is affordable to buy in is out of touch with reality.
Isn't it a requirement to be out of touch with reality to live in Ballard?
More attention (cumulatively) than the Troll?
The Troll is in Fremont, not Ballard.
If you haven't seen it yet, 'How to Drive In Ballard' is a great watch from Almost Live:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KBgIvH0tu6Y
According to a local Instagram posting he has difficulty traversing fence rails.
When he was young, a year ago, a neighbor saw his family helping him as he fumbled.
And so this neighbor says they cut open a hole in their fence at ground level for him.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Da5pCzqjhx1/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da9V4-FOjc_/
So some are appearing to enable this one critter.
Also locally - Seattle - local agencies are celebrating, and sometimes incorporating him into their business, including city sanitation departments spicing up pro social sanitation messages about using garbage cans, claiming Jimothy would want it that way. Some of these messages make less obvious sense than others, IMO.
Are you complaining about people helping a raccoon? The Internet hype is a bit much but why are you framing it like this raccoon should have died years ago.
God forbid we put out a pan of dry kibbles for a stray cat or a water pan outside for hiking dogs during hot days. That would be “enabling”.
When I lived in Chicago I'd see rats and cats eating cat food left out alongside each other. I'm not against helping wild animals as long as it doesn't come with a rat infestation issue.
I know that one. It’s the good ol’ tolerance formula:
Tolerance(A) = { 100% if A ≠ B; 0% if A → B }
Sprinkle on anything to suit your taste.
This does seem like an unfortunate truth of life, I always want to loan friends money, but can't afford to if they keep not paying me back :/
I also want to put a bird feeder outside a window we have, but I know that'll mean bird poop on a walkway that other people use
Same with some technology, I want to use X because it seems better but I know that'll mean it won't get the same support as Y so we have to use Y
It doesn't. You already have a rat infestation issue. This doesn't cause it or further it. You think that little handful of kibble compares to the free calories available in an entire dumpster full of chicago deep dish pizza scrap that sits out in the open air day in day out?
My assumption is that it exacerbates it, by keeping the primary predator of rats well fed. Are you saying that cats have no impact on rat populations?
They can take my bird feeders from my cold dead hands.
Feeding stray cats and feeding birds are very different things, pretty much at odds with each other. If a stray cat is fed, birds have a more difficult time surviving.
Feeding birds is just feeding stray cats with an extra step.
I do this too, but it's important to make sure you're either fully adopting them to keep them inside and care for medical issues, or at least make sure they get neutered/spayed before they're let out again if they can't live indoors. Stray cats are terrible for the local ecology- just feeding them without taking those steps is definitely harmful. In my town you can call animal control for strays and they'll clip the ears so you can see that they can't reproduce and are safe to leave out.
I'd also be hesitant to give people the idea that racoons are safe to interact with, even stray cats can be dangerous, but racoons can do much more damage. I feel like the ideal situation is they capture him and find an animal sanctuary away from the public. Wild animals with genetic issues don't usually live a great life
Or you can just toss some food out and call it a day
This ideology that all stray animals need to be siphoned up and neutered on the spot is bizarre to me. Sure there is a balance to be struck as you can't have a hundred thousand cats in a small area, but this idea that stray cats and dogs are simply not allowed to exist and reproduce naturally is insane.
Have you ever lived in a place where there aren’t effective control efforts?
These programs aren’t about people feeling good about themselves. The middle ground you suggest IS neutering and spaying all the animals you can find. The more extreme end of control is culls. It isn’t something you can ignore without pretty serious second order effects.
It ends up being pretty grim for the animals and sometimes humans too when stray population isn’t controlled. I’m talking about the conditions these animals end up enduring, not the culling which is its own grim process.
As someone who had to help get a stray cat population under control the ugly way (limited budget in a developing country), I would much rather that strays get fixed before it gets there.
I live in New Zealand, where they are big efforts to cull non-native wildlife, including all mammalian predators. There are traplines through the woods here, and I remember seeing a Department of Conservation visitor centre with a diorama of stray cats being killed by a kill trap.
Locally we've got an overpopulation of goats, and apparently they're going to start shooting them from helicopters.
They also drop a poison bait called 1080 that kills mammals from helicopters in remote regions here.
>Locally we've got an overpopulation of goats, and apparently they're going to start shooting them from helicopters.
Metal!
Domestic cats and dogs are not native to the Americas. They are pets or work animals. The cats should be adopted if possible and made indoor cats or neutered to keep their invasive population down. Dogs too, you need to treat feral dogs as wild and excellent rabies spreaders.
You do you, but I'd ask in earnest people please don't. Cats are invasive to the US and wreak havoc on local wildlife populations. Where I live, so many people feed the ferals that they've become an overpopulated menace.
it’ll probably end up badly, not because someone fed a raccoon, but because someone halfway across the planet will develop an unreasonable relationship with this wild animal.
What planet are you living on?
Homeowners are generally legally liable for anything that occurs on their property, especially if it can affect neighbouring properties to any provable extent.
There are carveouts and exemptions, but that isn’t a magical deflector shield.
So it doesn’t take a huge imagination to see how it could have negative externalities.
You are allowed to not have a fence at all if you so choose, assuming an HOA isn’t telling you otherwise. Property owners have no liability for wild animals transiting their property. If you are keeping pets and they get out I would assume the homeowner has some liability, but a wild raccoon is not any homeowner’s responsibility.
You're not liable if the animal is just passing through but if you're feeding the wildlife (actively or just have a bunch of open trash cans) and the wildlife decides to do wildlife things to your guests, you certainly could be liable.
A hole in a fence is kind of a middle area. Did you create the hole for the raccoon to enter your property easier or for it to leave easier? Rabbits sometimes hang out in my backyard to eat grass and my dogs love to chase them. They usually enter and exit under the fence in the same spot (near my neighbor's vegetable garden) but that spot is near the backdoor and they are sometimes trapped if they are in the middle of the yard or further back (they always escape but there's been a few close calls). I made a small hole at the opposite end of the yard for them to escape easier. But if I knew a critter was struggling to get into my yard, I definitely wouldn't make it easier for them.
really soulless comment, nice job
If random opining is worth any more than zero on HN… then can’t anyone else, also opine that they have more “soul” than ”mrbukkake”?
This is a textbook example of a logical fallacy called "poisoning the well", implying that because a user has a crass username that their opinions do not deserve to be treated with the same value as someone who posts under their feasibly real world name.
To be rational, you should take opinions as written, not considering the writer, and debate them on their merits alone.
Not that their opinion was rational, as we have not conclusively proved the existence of the soul. That being said, the negative emphasis of your reply probably deserved a rude comeback.
Gruff, annoyed responses to people enjoying a mutated racoon is not acceptable behavior. It's weird.
In my opinion, taking offense at whimsy is weak sauce and deserves to be replied to as such.
I realize you can say that my opinion doesn't matter since my username is bizarroland, and I do come from a strange place, but that's still my opinion and I'll stand by it.
> claiming Jimothy would want it that way.
You might enjoy this satire [0], lengthily titled: "I’m Jimothy, the Short-Spined Raccoon Who Has Taken the Internet by Storm, and the Collective Weight of Your Adoration Is Breaking My Already-Compromised Back"
[0] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-jimothy-the-short-spi...
Well it also opens passageways for other ground-dwelling animals as well, which is a good thing. I believe in the UK and other places where hedgehogs are native it’s somewhat common for people to cut small holes in their fences so they can get around.
So it’s not really a bad thing, IMO.
On my camera I only see cats. And AFAIK, domestic cats eat way more wild birds than anything and everything else human-made combined.
the cats can traverse a fence, hole or not, so not sure that's relevant?
Ok, that settles it. No one should because you see only cats.
> You’d have to be living under a dumpster not to have heard of Jimothy, Seattle’s favorite raccoon and the internet’s newest folk hero.
Or anywhere outside of Seattle, I suppose.
I met someone from Seattle just yesterday who had not heard of it. I think anyone who doesn't live on the internet can be forgiven for not following this story.
Obviously living under the dumpster!
it’s been in front page of nytimes and Reddit and now HN
I’m so happy. This link made me leave my safe space under the dumpster.
I'm in Europe and I've heard of him.
I’m in Seattle, live nearby, and have a raccoon family living my yard. I’m boggled the world knows about him, but they do.
Everyone in SF I know is talking about Jimothy.
I live in DC, on the other side of the country and I've heard about him, so I think you are underestimating his renown.
Even in Seattle, I feel like it only blew up in the last two days or so.
The Trump admin opted to make some stupid debacle about this on social media recently so it’s very possible to be aware of it outside of the Seattle sphere.
International attention has been on him before that debacle.
Anything to prevent us from looking up, I guess.
Canadian here. Had never heard of him. Though I also don't read news.
It's definitely a worldwide phenomenon at this point. Memes know no borders
Jimothy Easter Egg: https://www.google.com/search?q=jimothy (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024840)
Don't want to rain on the parade of something people like but this kind of title tells me nothing and I detest it. It tells me the thing is going to die like any other animal and that's the circle of life yet it wants to create engagement. Please stop publishing like this.
Tell me why the spinal condition is important. Tell me why I need to read this article because of [magic?]. Now I know nothing and don't like it.
Because it's interesting? At least the grammar is better than your ESL word salad post