Every now and then, the internet—like Bonnie Tyler before us—finds itself in need of a hero. Someone we can see ourselves in, someone who represents our highest hopes and dreams. Sometimes, it’s someone who does the thing we only dream about, like using their last day in a job to declare a high-profile “screw you” to the president of the United States. And sometimes, it’s just a fat, wild animal who ate so much he got himself stuck in a literal hole for trash.
That’s the case for the latest online superstar grabbing the public attention today, an Illinois raccoon that was discovered stuck in a sewer grate by police officers, having apparently eaten its fill of whatever delicious stuff—garbage, sewer apples, monster clowns—that raccoons feast on when they dive into a storm drain. Looking at its chubby little face, people were quick to project themselves onto this new mascot for self-destructive gluttony, reflecting on how, in a lot of ways, we are all just raccoons, happily trapped in the sewer drains of our earthly desires.
Anyway, the creature was eventually freed with the help of animal control; hopefully we won’t see it on some much more depressing police report in a week, frothing with rabies, or admitting to a reddit history full of racist political takes.