Is Jimothy OK? A Creature Investigation

Jimothy crept into our lives like any good cryptid—as a blurry, scuttling thing.

Kiana Hall, the Seattle local whose firsthand footage resulted in Jimothy's newfound fame, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/meet-jimothy-seattles-internet-famous-raccoon/">first thought she had spotted a cat running under a car.

But upon closer inspection, the creature was no feline. "I was seeing some kind of gray, fluffy creature that was shaped sort of like an orb with really long legs," Hall said in an interview with https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idRW896318072026RP1/">Reuters.

Hall's vertical video captures the creature, which she christened Jimothy, scampering enigmatically across a desiccated lawn.

Although the animal's coat and black mask identifies them clearly as a raccoon, Jimothy is undeniably orb-shaped, as if a planet suddenly sprouted a cluster of legs so that it might prance about to unsettle and delight Seattleites lucky enough to glimpse them.

The raccoon has since become unofficially canonized as a local saint, inspiring various effigies in the media of https://www.instagram.com/p/Da6smE0NSLo/">mural, https://bsky.app/profile/brettshaw.bsky.social/post/3mqxnhoxgdk2h">mathematics, https://bsky.app/profile/eshpur.bsky.social/post/3mqwubh4ias24">medieval marginalia, and even a https://x.com/MattLoveless/status/2078647853707317420">Mariners in-game cameo.

Although Jimothy's adoring fans use he/him for the raccoon, Jimothy's sex is unknown. "If a video emerges where Jimothy is standing on his (or her!) hind legs and facing forward, then we might be able to determine Jimothy's sex," Lauren Stanton, a cognitive ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an email.

So until we are fortunate to be flashed by Jimothy, we're all just guessing.

The reason behind Jimothy's distinct shape, however, is more decipherable.

When Kent Morton, a veterinarian at Compassionate Care Animal Hospital in Michigan who co-hosts the podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vet-med-for-idiots-by-idiots/id1734510582">Vet Med For Idiots By Idiots, first saw images of Jimothy, he felt he could diagnose the raccoon.

Jimothy appears to have a congenital issue called short spine syndrome. "The soft tissues in the spine will fuse the vertebrae, and that's what gives them the short neck appearance," Morton said. "It's a very distinctive condition," he added.