Colour neo-traditional tattoo on an upper thigh showing a shaded raccoon, a songbird on an oak branch, peach peonies and rosehips, with a small atom emblem below.

Raccoon, bird and peonies on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A shaded grey raccoon sits among peach and orange peonies, green oak leaves and red rosehips, with a small songbird perched on a branch at the upper left. The raccoon is rendered in soft greys with fine detail in the face and fur, while the flowers and leaves use bold coloured fills and dark outlines. A red and black atom emblem with radiating orange rays sits at the bottom of the composition.

Neo-trad Realism Botanical Thigh Bird Peony Flower Leaves Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The generator coughs at half past two, and by the time you've coaxed it back to life you can hear the raccoon in the candyfloss van, the tin lid rattling against its own rim. Lou Carrow says the animal came with the Atomic Hall exhibit from Doncaster, a sorry old trick that was meant to climb a ladder for a penny before the lights went out for good. The showmen have been losing sugar and sausage rolls all week. Lou says it's your problem now, because you're the one who sleeps nearest the vans.

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You don't go in with a torch. You go in with a tin of pilchards and sit on an upturned crate among the buckets of peonies Nan Pruett bought at the market in Spalding, peach and orange and going soft at the edges in the heat. The raccoon watches you over a paw. Its mask gives it the look of someone who has been awake longer than you have and has opinions about it. Somewhere above, a small bird that had been roosting in the painted oak on the hoop-la backdrop starts up, one thin note after another, as if it is keeping time for the pair of you.

You open the tin and set it on the floor, then leave the flap of the van rolled up and go back to your bunk without looking round. You hear the tin scrape, then nothing, then the slow tread of something unhurried going down the ramp. When you step out at dawn the field is grey with dew and the atom sign on the side of the Hall glints like a coin in the mud. The bird is in the hedge by the gate. There is a ring of rosehips on the grass, and the raccoon is nowhere at all, only the tin, licked clean and turned neatly on its side.