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Had a neighbor many many years ago who had one in a cage in their backyard 
That poor animal was profoundly unhappy.
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I certainly wouldn’t downplay the unpleasantness of rabies; but it’s the collection of helminthic parasites racoons consort with that really sells me on the undesirability of contact with them.
Sure, ‘ocular larva migrans’, sounds cuddly…will go well with the eosinophilic meningoencephalitis.
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Aren’t they related to bears? (Hence “trash pandas”) I figure if it’s still light outside and I see one (and there’s no trap involved etc.) then something is very wrong with it.
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Tim the Enchanter : “ Follow only if ye be men of valor, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul and so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived ! Bones of full 50 men lie strewn about it’s lair, so brave knights if you do doubt your courage, come no further ! For death awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth.”
King Arthur : “What an eccentric performance…”
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Yah, this is pretty much true of all wild animals. They’re all cute, friendly, and mostly harmless until they hit puberty. Then, chaos and mayhem. You’re quite right that this is how people fall into the trap.
It’s especially bad with large cats and primates. Keeping chimps as pets was all the rage in the 1970s but chimps get very aggressive and very dangerous when they grow up and are literally superhumanly strong. I think some people had to die before that trend mercifully faded away.
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I mean, it’s not like veterinarians want to kill the animals. If there was a better way, they’d be using it. It’s a hard problem which is why nobody has solved it. It’s not from lack of trying. Plenty of smart people work on it.
The solution is for people to stay the fuck away from wild animals so we don’t have to test them. Easy, cheap, and no multi-generational biological research program required.
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The problem is that we really don’t. There is no test that can detect the virus up reliably in people before the onset of clinical disease or death. And you really really want to start treatement before clinical disease onset.
Hense testing the animal. And when the animal is tested the test has to be very sensitive as the impact of missing a diagnosis is serious morbidity and mortality for the person.
Now the other problem… Rabies isnt really detectable by any current molecular technique in other tissues before very late stages. But animals can still transmit rabies before that stage. Hense testing the virus where it lives directly by sampling nervous system tissue (brains).
When you have a disease that kills very quickly after symptoms develop there just isn’t room for a “maybe” in diagnostics. It’s not that people want to kill the Animals it’s just that if we don’t people will die.
Heres a link with more details for those intersted.
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Reminds me of Pixar’s Ratatouille film featuring a cute rat and the bluray’s bonus animated short feature touching on the danger of rats.
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Sadly, even not having rabies can be 100% lethal for raccoons.
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Let that pedant pennant fly freely.
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When Johnny Depp and Amber Heard illegally smuggled their dogs into Australia a few years back internet “comedians” made all sorts of clever comments about the Australian quarantine laws. So glad I live in a rabies/foot and mouth disease free island.
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The award actually comes on a pendant.
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Actually, it has been discontinued.
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It needs to be resurrected just once just for this comment.
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Seems petulant regarding the pedant pennant vs pendant.
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Pshaw, that post positively pulsates petulance. /s
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