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Critter Camp Out: A little raccoon from Kansas City finds friendship in the Furry Fandom.
It's such a nice head, a raccoon head, meticulously sculpted from Styrofoam, beaming a permanent cartoon smile. Its owner is a mulleted man from Fayetteville, Arkansas, who goes by the name March Hare. He took twelve hours to make it, working in four-hour shifts. It'll be upholstered in faux fur to match a full-length suit complete with fidgety claws and a black-ringed tail. Worth nearly $1,000, it'll be worn on special occasions, such as this camp out at a dusty KOA one hour west of St. Louis.
Steven Fredrickson gazes at the head longingly, absently tickling his chin with his fingers. He hails from Kansas City, and friends here know him as Nikon, the raccoon. "I want to try and get a fur suit," Nikon says to the man holding the head. "But mine is going to be rubber or prosthetic. I just overheat too easy."
Because of this overheating problem, he plans to get a "partial" - fuzzy arm, leg and head coverings that tuck into shirts and pants to make a grown man look like an upright-walking animal in human clothes. Nikon hopes the suit will bring him a step closer to his dream. "People say it's the closest thing to transformation," he explains. Deep down, this 24-year-old man longs to be a talking raccoon.
It's the first night of the Howl, Growl and Purr, an annual camp out in Stanton, Missouri, for Midwestern members of the "Furry Fandom," an international consortium of people with a unique fondness for animals. The sky shows signs of rain. Nikon is dressed frumpily in shorts, sandals and a San Diego Padres hat. His T-shirt displays a buxom female raccoon with long, flowing hair - the logo of a larger furry gathering: Chicago's Midwest FurFest. This small Missouri gathering has drawn furries, which members of the Fandom call themselves, from as far away as Memphis and Oklahoma City. Nikon's been planning this trip since February, when he put in for time off from the photo counter at an Eckerd drug store in Johnson County.
He's lingering at the edge of a crowd that's gathered on the porch of a KOA Kozy...