THE TOUCHY part of the Oneidas’ animated short was depicting how the raccoon, after playing dead, gobbles up all the cute dancing crawfish celebrating his demise. The filmmakers showed the raccoon’s feast as a cloud of mayhem. But there were arms flying out, tiny arms from those adorable crawfish, a detail that risked being far too graphic for kids. And captivating them was the idea of telling an old tribal tale in a way that would teach new generations its message: that even if you’re a cute little crawfish, you’ll pay a dear price if you boast, and lie É as one crawfish did by claiming to have slain their predator. But the flying arms were edgy, and fun, in a 21st century way. So Dale Rood and his crew left ‘em in and began submitting the eight-minute “Raccoon & Crawfish” to festivals such as Moondance... “Raccoon & Crawfish” won Moondance’s Sandcastle Award for best animation a year ago, and by now it’s been screened at 64 festivals around the world and won 13 awards, and there soon will be more animated shorts telling legends of the Oneida... It took them more than a year to complete the eight minutes, with music by Brent Michael Davids, a Mohican, using rattles and water drums... For all they knew, “Raccoon & Crawfish” could have been a one-and-out effort. Then came the festival showings that evoked the Hank Snow hit “I’ve Been Everywhere,” as the Oneidas and their short made the scene from Cannes to London as well as Big Bear, screening there as wildfires approached. The flip side? A screening in an Iceland “ice theater.”