Black and grey traditional tattoo of a raccoon face with bold outlines and hatched fur, on the back of a hand.

Raccoon face on the back of a hand

Traditional · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A raccoon face fills the back of the hand, shown head on with pointed ears, a black mask, pale cheeks and a dark nose. Bold black outlines and short hatch marks suggest fur, with grey shading softening the mask and eye rings. The tattoo is rendered only in black and grey ink and is centred across the hand, with a few other faint marks visible at the edges.

Traditional Hand Animal Face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Margaret, you will want to know why the ferry boat smelled of tar and bruised apples when I came back to Lindisfarne, and the honest answer is a raccoon called Brindle, who had learned the padlock on the boathouse before any of us learned to read the tide tables. She came in through the gap under the cistern every night after the fishermen went out, and by October she was sitting on the bench outside the chapel waiting for me like a bored landlady.

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I tried to be stern with her. I showed her the bag of gulls' eggs I had bartered from Tom Ferris, and she took the bag from my hand, emptied it into her own cheeks and looked at me with those ringed eyes as if I had forgotten my manners. Father Anselm said the island had a thief, and I said yes, and he gave me the look you give a man who has confessed to something he has not done.

So on the last Sunday I took the boat out to the mudflats at low water and left her there with the spare crab pots and a tin of condensed milk. I thought she would sulk. Instead she stood at the water's edge and washed every crumb off her paws, slow and careful, as if she meant to be seen doing it. Then she went back over the sand without once looking round.

You asked me in your last letter whether I missed the place. I do. I miss her most of all, the way she read my pockets and always found the one thing I had hoped to keep.