Two years ago a raccoon fell out of a tree, bounced off the shed roof, and landed in the middle of the yard. And then he just stayed there, stirring just a little now and then. Figuring the raccoon was either rabid or incompetent, I called animal control. 45 minutes later, a deputy showed up, just as the raccoon seemed like he was coming around. We walked back into the yard to get him, and the raccoon bolted for the tree and climbed back up. The deputy said that if he was lucid enough to run from us, she didn’t think he was rabid. She also said that a warm spell in January followed by an abrupt cold snap was causing a lot of critters to become hypothermic, and several had fallen out of trees like our raccoon did.
Be super careful cleaning that shit up. Most raccoons (70-90%) carry Baylisascaris Procyonis (raccoon roundworm), which while an intestinal parasite in trash pandas, has the delightful ability to recognize that it’s not in a raccoon if you get it in you (by inhaling eggs in raccoon poop dust, fecal oral contamination etc…), and cause visceral, ocular, or neural larval migrans… not something to F around with.
My Siberian Husky used to bug me to share my beer with her. What she did get didn’t seem to harm her much since she lived to the age of 16. However, I wouldn’t share booze with any other dog I’ve had since then.
That’s got to be the best nickname for Raccoons I’ve heard, made me laugh out loud! Thank you, I’ll be using that from now on.
We have a few raccoons gone wild here in the U.K., pets that have either escaped, (quite likely), or deliberately released when they’ve become too much of a handful, (equally likely), but they’re very small numbers.
The same thing happened in Germany, there’s now something like 100k of them down there. Be careful what you wish for. It’s likely only a matter of time before they’ve colonized most of the continent.
No. No, it did not.
Like Mink, those furry critters were brought to continental Europe as a supplier of, erm: fur. And yes, some were released by accident, and some on purpose.
Nowadays, those trash pandas are quite adapted to basically every environment - but you still rarely see them…
I was also wrong about the numbers, it says over a million of them already. The Hessian population may expand far enough to reach my backyard in a few decades.
Trash pandas are really quite clever, and can be quite nasty if they want to/are hungry/motivated enough.
I’ve seen the aftermath on domestic pets (mainly rabbits left in outside hutches), some of whom came in for surgical repair, some of whom came in in pieces for disposal…
They’re a bit like coyotes IMHO (at least in terms of cleverness and adaptability).
I think that’s what I looked like when I was in Africa (Botswana or Zimbabwe, if (blurry) memory serves) and got a wee bit tipsy on Amarula! That’s made from marula fruit.
Well, if coyotes had hands and could climb buildings.
Toronto, the raccoon capital of the known universe, has an ongoing war with these clever little bastards. We have had to go to a new generation of raccoon-proof* green bins.
