Cecilia Glispy zoomed in her camera to examine the contents of a glass butcher case at Faidley’s Seafood.

To the left, two skinned muskrats, their gray reptilian tails poking out from plastic wrap. To the right, a single, skinned, intact raccoon, also wrapped in plastic, resting on a bed of ice. Its fangs formed an upside-down grimace above a sign: “Raccoon is back! $38.00.″

In a video that has now been viewed more than 295,000 times on TikTok, Glipsy pondered a question. “Maybe it’s just been a minute since I’ve been in Lexington Market,” she said. “But since when they started selling muskrat and [rac]coon?”

Since forever, says Lou Fleming, general manager of Faidley’s Seafood, who began working for the seafood stand nearly 50 years ago. He remembers when raccoons were $5 apiece.

Though Faidley’s today is better known for its jumbo lump crab cakes, the business has been selling the rodents since it opened in 1886 at Lexington Market, one of the oldest continually operating markets in the country. Damye Hahn, whose great-grandfather cofounded Faidley’s, said that back then it was typical for 19th-century seafood purveyors to sell wetland game like ducks, terrapin and frogs, in addition to fish and crabs.

At the time, both raccoons and muskrats were more popular fare for Baltimoreans, many of whom migrated to the city from more rural areas, bringing their culinary preferences with them.

Raccoon meat was for generations a staple of many Americans’ diets. “The Joy of Cooking,” considered the kitchen bible, featured instructions for raccoon carcasses throughout the 1900s, according to Atlas Obscura. In 1926, a Mississippi woman sent President Calvin Coolidge a raccoon to eat for Thanksgiving; instead, the critter became a family pet.

While raccoon eating has mostly died out, muskrat remains a little-known delicacy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where there’s even a yearly festival to celebrate the aquatic rodent, including a skinning competition and muskrat stew. Faidley’s sells more than 1,000 muskrats a year.

Faidley’s may be the only place in Baltimore that customers can find either muskrat or raccoons today. Both are available for wholesale purchase only during a limited season from January to March, though Faidley’s can sell their frozen meat to customers throughout the year.

While other stores have long since stopped selling muskrat or raccoon, Hahn’s father and co-owner Bill Devine said Faidley’s kept on the practice to be different, ”and to take care of an old section of the population that were either born eating it or acquired a taste for it.” Demand has declined in recent years, though, Devine said. “The old-timers that ate ‘em are dying off.”

Despite the meats’ longevity in the market, its presence still confuses some — even the city’s health department, whose inspectors came by a few years ago asking questions. Fleming is used to having to educate them.

Some commenters on Glispy’s video posted that they remembered seeing the animals in their youths. Though she’s lived in Baltimore her whole life and shops at Lexington Market regularly, Glispy, a pescatarian, said she never remembered seeing the creatures before. “I just wouldn’t expect to see muskrat or raccoon in Baltimore City. Maybe on the Eastern Shore,” she said Wednesday.

Why are the heads, feet and tails still on the critters? Well, by law, they must be left on until sold to customers. Otherwise, Fleming said, “you don’t know what it is.”

Glispy, who works as a barber, says she was stunned — and a bit horrified — to see the meats on display. “It’s the face,” she said. “It looks like a dog.”

Fleming said Faidley’s hasn’t seen an uptick in sales in raccoon and muskrat recently, despite the meats going viral on TikTok.

To him, though, there are few things tastier than a well-prepared raccoon, soaked overnight and seasoned generously with cayenne pepper, garlic and thyme. That’s the way his father, from Cumberland County, Virginia, used to prepare it for the family when Fleming was growing up in Turner Station. It’s the way Fleming still cooks it today, offering samples to customers and friends.

“I’d rather have that than a filet mignon steak,” he said.