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One place you absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly do not want to be if you’re a healthy, mid­dle-aged Amer­i­can lob­ster: trapped in a sub­ur­ban gro­cery store in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia. But that’s where this week’s pod­cast begins. It does­n’t stay there long, though. Bon­nie Hazen and Toni Leone take us on an adven­ture that car­ries us by car, by plane, and by boat toward a deep­er under­stand­ing of those mys­te­ri­ous pro­tec­tive feel­ings that some­times sweep over us — well, some of us — when we encounter our fel­low ani­mals — um, okay, some of them. Trevor Cor­son, author of the best­selling The Secret Life of Lob­sters, assists. Then we trav­el to 1911, and look at a box with a dead rac­coon that showed up in Wash­ing­ton D.C., at the office of Ger­rit S. Miller. After pulling it out and inspect­ing it, he real­ized this rac­coon was from the Caribbean islands of Guade­loupe, and unlike any­thing he’d ever seen before. He chris­tened it Pro­cy­on minor and in doing so changed the his­to­ry of Guade­loupe for­ev­er. We move from the stor­age rooms of the Smith­son­ian to the sandy beach­es of Guade­loupe, chas­ing the tale of this trash can tip­ping crit­ter. All the while try­ing to uncov­er what it means to be special.