The Marvin Chronicles

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The Marvin Chronicles

Best-selling Virginia author Sharyn McCrumb, known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels, adopted neighborhood raccoons as a ‘stress reliever’ during Covid isolation. She’s fed some over the years, but began setting out larger meals on her deck last year. Over the months, more raccoons began to drop by frequently in the evening for a scheduled snack.

Naturally, she took the daily interactions with her visitors and put pen to paper—or fingertips to keyboard— to document the visits. But as she watched the raccoons, how they interact with each other, or chose to ignore one another, she began naming them, and then she began writing fanciful conversations—back stories, if you will—about each one.

She calls her stories The Marvin Chronicles, after the name she had given one of the male raccoons first brought to the patio by his mother. She posts the stories on Facebook, but has realized that her tales may be leading her in a direction unintended when she first began setting out dishes of kibble and leftovers for her nocturnal visitors. “I expect this will all turn into a book one day,” she said.

McCrumb is widely known for her Appalachian novels, including the New York Times best sellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, and The Songcatcher. Ghost Riders won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature from the East Tennessee Historical Society and the national Audie Award for Best Recorded Book. Her books have been named New York Times and Los Angeles Times Notable Books.

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The Marvin Chronicles

Sharyn McCrumb photo

‘For my own amusement’

The Facebook entries about the raccoons “were truly begun for my own amusement, because I have spent the last year in isolation on our mountain farm, and the resident raccoons in our woods have become my social set,” McCrumb wrote in an exchange of emails with SML. 

She began last summer by taking photographs of the first visitors and posting them online.

“The Chronicles are evolving, from … short captions accompanying photos, when baby Marvin and his sisters were first brought to the porch, to … weekly short stories that I started posting in October. Many of them are based on actual events, such as when the young bear came to dinner last fall,” she said.

The initial visitors, a mother and her brood, earned the names The Duchess, Marvin and his sisters War, Famine, and Pestilence. Another early diner was a young male she named John of Gaunt, and he’s become her narrator for her tales.

“We generally maintain a respectful distance of about two feet, although the regulars quickly learned to accept a cookie from my hand. They do it very gently and politely with the forepaws, absolutely no snatching or taking it with teeth. Pestilence, the only dunkard in the tribe, would probably run back and forth from me to the water pan all evening long if I would indulge her cookie addiction to that extent,” McCrumb wrote. 

She also has an opossum who usually comes solo to dine, she said.

“The greatest number I’ve seen at one time on the porch, in early fall … is 13. Generally, we get three or four at a time for two to three feedings a night. The Duchess, who will soon turn six, does not care to dine with her obnoxious younger relatives, so she comes alone, often as late as 1 a.m. to avoid the crowd. She stands on her hind legs and peers through the glass door until I go into the room and notice her there. She has been coming for five years and has her own bowl,” McCrumb said.

“Marvin himself was back tonight, sharing a platter with Frostkin the possum. I’ve never seen that before. Usually Frostkin waits until everyone leaves, and eats what’s left. Tonight he seems to have thrown caution to the winds, and decided to belly up to the plate. At one point tonight, Frostkin was sandwiched between three fat raccoons, and no one seemed to mind his presence. Go figure.”

She has struck on a mix of menu items for her visitors. 

“The base layer is dry kibble, but only the very hungry or the latecomers bother with it. The good stuff on top of that is a mixture of dry cereal (peanut butter flavor, if available) mixed with various things: canned yams, corn, pork ‘n beans, Spaghetti-o’s, grapes, peanuts, sometimes leftovers—they like rice and stews. In the fall, we cut up pumpkins and freeze bite-size pieces. Raw pumpkin was not popular, but if you microwave it for two minutes and drizzle pancake syrup over it, they love it,” she wrote.

“I am becoming the Paula Deene of Raccoon Cuisine,” McCrumb noted.

“I should probably mention that we live on 80 acres, far from town and neighbors, so the raccoons do not wander off to raid people’s garbage cans or bird feeders,” McCrumb said. “The Glorrifat tribe is a family indigenous to this mountain, and they stay put. They have never done any damage or menaced our cats. In late June, one or two mothers will bring her just-weaned kits to the porch. At first they wrestle each other and splash in the water pan while she eats, but in a couple of days they figure it out, and eat together from one of the platters. Then some of them become regulars. There are coyotes in the valley, though, and what with one thing and another,  the population here stays fairly stable at about a dozen. In the wild, the average lifespan of a raccoon is two to three years,” she said.

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The Marvin Chronicles

John of Gaunt. Sharyn McCrumb photo

‘Quite a following’

The stories on Facebook expanded as the pandemic held sway, and readers from all over enjoyed following the raccoonteur tale.

“Now Marvin has quite a following,” McCrumb said. “Because so many people were sad about the isolated holidays, I offered to send a Christmas card from Marvin to anyone who sent him one first. (I figured on maybe two dozen responses.) Marvin got several hundred cards, from 37 states, three Canadian provinces, and Australia, so I spent much of December being Marvin’s social secretary,” she said.

She said she doubts Facebook followers have little idea how much time it takes to pen the cute stories that they enjoy.

“The general reader seldom gets to see the process of a story taking shape—the development of characters, the construction of place and backstory—but that’s what I have been doing for the past eight months: creating the elements of the story little by little, and letting readers watch it come together. It takes at least three days to write one of these thousand word stories. I’ll bet people don’t realize that,” McCrumb said.

“I think when I do write The Marvin Chronicles I’ll end up with something more along the lines of Watership Down, an animal society independent of humans.”

'The Marvin Chronicles, By John of Gaunt' 

as told by Sharyn McCrumb

The Lost Boys

I happened to meet one of members of the Hole in the Woods Gang on the porch steps the other night. He had crept up there late at night to get some food, but when he saw the Waitress moving around on the other side of the glass door, he abandoned the food tray and hurried back down the steps, just as I was coming up. He was a dark brown fellow, with that sharp face and pointed nose that always makes me think “weasel,” and a long bushy tail, which told me that he wasn’t one of Glorrifat’s brood, because a shorter than average tail is their family trait. He might have been a handsome fellow, if he didn’t look so shifty. 

“You don’t have to run away, you know,” I told him. “The food is put there for you to take.”

His eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Yeah? What’s the catch?”

“Well, there isn’t one. You don’t have to feel guilty about taking the food. If you had stayed there on the porch instead of running away, the Waitress would even have given you a cookie.”

He sneered. “Yeah, right. Like I’d fall for a trick like that.”

“You’re one of the yearlings from the woods, aren’t you?”

He nodded, and then quickly glanced around to see if we could be overheard. I didn’t know if they knew that we referred to them as the Hole in the Woods Gang, but it seemed best not to mention it, in case he took offense.

“We mostly see all of you together, and since you’re not from one of our tribe, I don’t know which one you are. What’s your name?”

He gave me a cold stare. “We don’t tell anybody our names.”

Honestly, I thought he was joking. I chuckled. “Well, do you have an alias, then?”

“Yeah, but if I told you, I’d have to change it.”

He kept looking around as we talked, as if he expected to be set upon by some unseen predator, but all was quiet. I didn’t hear, see, or smell anything out of the ordinary. I felt sorry for this poor chap, living in a constant state of red alert. He seemed to be only half listening to what I said. No names? I wondered what they called each other.

“Well, never mind about your name. Anyway, we all know one of you. Crazy René —the one who steals the food bowls.” I laughed. “Thinks they’ll refill themselves by magic.”

He bristled a little at that. “René is not crazy! You never know when the food will run out, or stop coming altogether, and René is trying to be prepared for any emergency. That’s smart,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your friend, but really you’re all quite safe here. You don’t have to slink in at midnight and pretend you’re stealing the food.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Duchess heading up the steps to the now empty porch. She prefers to dine alone late at night, because she says our manners leave much to be desired.

I nodded toward her. “Watch this,” I said to the young stranger.

The Duchess was nibbling at some bits of leftover kibble on the red platter, but moments later the glass door opened, and the Waitress called her by name. Instead of running away, the Duchess walked toward the door, and sat down to wait. Moments later the Waitress set down a fresh warm meal in the Duchess’s personal bowl. With her left paw the Duchess scooped up mouthfuls of yams, corn, and pasta, completely ignoring the human in the doorway.

“You see?” I said softly to the young hooligan. “Nothing to be afraid of. “

“We don’t trust anybody,” he replied. “Sooner or later, you always regret it.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’ve had a rough life up until now.”

He shrugged. “Got kicked out of my home turf. All of us did. Sent packing before we knew what was happening. And you know who ran us off? Our own mothers! For no reason! So we came here to these woods, me and my pals, and we all stick together now. We take what we need, and we trust nobody but ourselves.”

I nodded sympathetically. “It has to be done, though.” I was about to explain when the Duchess, having finished her dinner, stopped beside us on the steps. She must have heard what we said.

She turned to the sullen yearling. “Your mother saved your life,” she said.

He growled. “Her? She ran me off.”

“She had to. If you were still hanging around by the next mating season, the old boar who leads your tribe would have killed you. He will not tolerate any rivals.” She got a faraway look in her eyes. “I’ve had to do it myself, and I promise you it hurt your mother more than you’ll ever know.”

I knew she was thinking about her last child, the beautiful silvery Baby, round-faced as a child’s toy bear and devoted to her. But to keep him safe from Glorrifat, she had sent him away, but she has never stopped missing him and wondering what became of him.

“Here in this new place we stay away from the old fat one,” said the tough yearling. “But he’s getting older, and we’re getting stronger. Some day ...”

A sudden sound startled him, and he dashed into the woods.

“It’s sad, “ I said to the Duchess. “I wish we could make him understand.”

She sniffed. “He’ll never be a leader, that one. He lacks wisdom and courage, and he cares only about himself.”

“I’m sorry for him,” I said, but the Duchess wasn’t listening any longer. She was staring off into the dark forest thinking about her own lost boy. I hoped, wherever he was, that he was happier than the one we met tonight.