James Blackwood, a former police officer in Canada's Nova Scotia province, loves to introduce himself as the "raccoon whisperer". That is because for the past 20 years he has fed at least 25 raccoons every night.

A video that recently went viral online shows an old man feeding grapes and hot dogs to 20 to 25 raccoons. In the past two weeks it has been watched more than 10 million times on YouTube, making Blackwood famous overnight. Many animal lovers around the world already knew him, and he had 200,000 followers. Now the whole world knows him.

It all began in 1999. Blackwood's wife (who later died) brought home a raccoon that had been injured by a car near their house. It recovered under her care and was released back into the woods. After that, the raccoon would sometimes come back to eat at the Blackwoods' home, bringing a cub and a few companions. Gradually the numbers grew, and every evening a band of raccoons would gather outside their house for food.

James Blackwood's wife died in 2003. Before she died, James promised her he would look after the cats at home and their wild friends, the raccoons. He has kept that promise: he feeds the raccoons every evening and posts videos of it on his YouTube channel.

Blackwood says the raccoons live in the woods next to his house and turn up at a set time every day to eat. They wait at the door so eagerly that sometimes the crowd makes it hard even to open it.

After seeing the video, many animal welfare organisations offered to help James Blackwood. He turned down their offers and asked them instead to feed the wild animals in their own areas.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.