THE DAILY WIRE · MISSISSIPPI, USA · 2026-09-21
Basic Training for the Trash Panda Set
Mississippi has stood up what can only be described as the Parris Island of the raccoon world: a boot camp for orphaned kits with no mother, no den, and apparently no idea how to open a dumpster lid on their own.
According to WSLS, the program teaches abandoned raccoon kits the survival skills they'd normally learn from their mothers, presumably things like foraging, climbing, and looking guilty near unlocked coolers. The goal, officials say, is to get the animals ready for release back into the wild rather than a lifetime of dependency on humans and their unsecured trash cans.
This reporter finds the premise sound, if slightly insulting to raccoons, a species that has spent decades demonstrating advanced problem-solving skills against deadbolts, bungee cords, and at least one Williamson County sheriff's training center. If anything, the curriculum should be flipped: humans attending Raccoon University to learn how they keep getting outsmarted.
Tracked down for comment near a Mississippi tree line, Miss Wanda, a backyard possum with strong opinions about the neighboring raccoon population, offered her assessment of the program's necessity.
Her account of the raccoons' baseline competence differs sharply from the official record.
Whether the graduates go on to distinguished careers in birdfeeder theft remains to be seen. The center has not announced a mascot, but this reporter respectfully suggests a tiny cap and gown.
“Boot camp? Back in my day we called that 'getting kicked out of the den' and figuring it out. Fact for you: possums have been playing dead so well for so long we invented the concept, and not one of us needed a certificate for it.” — Miss Wanda, backyard possum
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