Don’t forget the cream puff!

On September 18, Twitter-user @3h4m1, mother of a seven-year-old son and four-year-old daughter, shared a story of the day her young daughter received a letter from a tanuki in their mail slot, scratched onto a leaf. The letter read: “I’ll come over to play on Monday. From Tanuki”

Tanuki are a Japanese subspecies to the raccoon dog, canid animals which are native to Asia, and who in some ways resemble the North American raccoon. Tanuki are real animals, but have a long history in Japanese folklore.

1280px-tanuki01_960Image: Wikipedia/663highland

@3h4m1 goes on to explain that the letter was actually written by her son, who had hoped to please his little sister with the note. As sweet as the gesture was, that left mom and dad in a bit of a predicament, as their daughter was so overjoyed by the expectation of a tanuki coming by to play that they didn’t want to let her down, and began thinking of just how they might manage to summon a real live tanuki by the following Monday.

Then to make matters worse, the little girl went with her father to go buy a treat for her tanuki guest.

▼ “Worst case scenario I guess we can ask someone to come and act like a tanuki… My daughter is out with her papa to buy a cream puff for it. A cream puff for a tanuki…”

Obviously, summoning up a real tanuki was out of the question. A person in costume may have done the trick, but after some serious thinking, the family came up with the perfect solution:

▼ “Getting the situation under control, hubs took our daughter to the zoo. I’m out on a different errand with our son, and just got a call to my cell phone: ‘The tanuki was at the zoo working! He had a really stripey tail!’ Um…that, is a raccoon.”

three_raccoons_in_a_treeImage: Wikipedia/garyjwood

While the family wasn’t able to get an actual tanuki over to the house for a play date, it seems their daughter was perfectly happy with the way the situation played out. Let’s just hope she doesn’t find out that a raccoon is not a tanuki for a while!

Source: Twitter/@3h4m1 via BUZZmag
Top Image: Wikipedia/663highland