Some weeks ago I wrote a Back Then column about opossums in general and Cherokee lore pertaining to them in particular. A reader e-mailed me saying that she enjoyed that column and would like to see a similar one about raccoons. Here goes.

The most interesting fact I can think of about raccoons that may not be widely known is why they supposedly wash their food and hands. When I write “hands” I really mean “forepaws.”

Certain concepts about the natural world are so ingrained in our consciousness that we feel almost cheated when we find out they aren’t true. Like many of you, I grew up reading books about animals like the ones depicted in the Mother Westwind Stories. Raccoons appeared in every one of those books. Invariably, they were cute but mischievous critters whose major redeeming trait was that they always washed their hands before eating.

My mother made that trait into a model for behavior. Washing one’s hands before a meal became the moral equivalent of a raccoon’s supposedly fastidious ways. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned what raccoons are really up to when they take to the water.

Like opossums, raccoons are exceptionally well-suited to the shifting, changing lifestyles required in modern times. They are as well off in regard to population numbers today as they were when the first settlers arrived. Their agile hands allow them to walk, swim, climb, and open containers with ease, providing them more choices of food and shelter than most animals.

When it comes to eating, they aren’t picky. Frogs, fish, salamanders, shellfish, turtles, snakes, insects, worms, acorns, garbage, etc., are all fair game. Often they’ll eat what they find without any further ado. But they like to knead and tear at the food in order to locate any matter that should be rejected. If water is handy, they dip the food into it with their forepaws.

The forepaws are endowed with special tactile sensors that are activated by water; thereby, they can locate any foreign matter more readily. But technically speaking they aren’t really washing their hands, although that may be a hygienic by-product of the process.

The ancient — who knew the raccoon as “kvhli” — were exceptionally close observers of the natural world. They noted the animal’s exceptional cleverness. Accordingly, they assigned the raccoon a major role in their story about how the male redbird (cardinal) became red.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.