I had to jump in and comment on your request about raccoons: "can we have some released into the wilds of England please." In reading the current comments, I am not surprised to see someone from Toronto demurring. That's where I live too. Trust us, you do not want raccoons in England.

Raccoons are smart enough to move large rocks off the top of a composter to get inside. They are smart enough to get around any kind of protection on garbage cans or bins short of actually putting on a padlock: at my sister's townhouse complex they learned to open the bolts of the doors on the garbage collection area. In Toronto you cannot put your garbage out for collection the night before or a family of those cute little animals will have you out in your pajamas desperately picking your rotten vegetables off the sidewalk in time for the garbage truck. A raccoon was smart enough -- I read this in a local newspaper that quoted a pest control specialist who actually saw this -- it was smart enough to learn to operate a garage door opener to get inside the garage, where it was living. A city councillor in a discussion of garbage collection issues said "The raccoons in my neighborhood drive their own cars."

Raccoons chewed their way into my mother-in-law's attic not once but twice. Raccoons strip my cherry tree of all its cherries and then poop all over my porch. They climb up on my extension roof and investigate how to get into my bedroom through the window. They climb off trees onto apartment balconies and rummage through everything. They fight over garbage in the middle of the night. They set off car alarms.

And if you think they are cute, well the young ones are. But you have never faced a surly growling beast "as big as a planet", as my brother says, blocking your way up your own driveway when you arrive home in the dark.

Nevertheless, we in Toronto sort of do love our raccoons. I think it's because they are evidence that the human race does not actually control everything.