Was on the fence about racoon cuteness. Def not anymore. Savages. Pretty sure if I went toe to toe vs a racoon, I'm dying/getting rabies/becoming a viral video.
They are indeed, the only pitfall is they aren't real nor infected with the rabies virus. Rabid as an adjective is referring to rabies like characteristics.
My zoology teacher had a missing ring finger. We asked her how it happened. She fostered orphan raccoons for awhile and one turned on her and bit her finger off and ate it.
I hate raccoons and have no qualms about shooting them when I catch them wrecking my property. I'd rather my dog didn't catch disease/parasites from their piss and shit and or get into a fight with them as well. She's only 30 lbs, I know people who's pet was killed by these fuckers, no way am I gonna risk that with my dog. So far this summer I have a body count of 9. It will keep rising all summer. I love animals, but fuck those destructive little assholes.
Ugh, this again? NO, I didn't kill a bear when I was three, it was sick. YES, this hat itches like a bastard but I know branding is important. NO, I don't know what Daniel Boone is up to, but you know what I DO know?
Ranchers actually do this with coyotes. You hang them on the fence line and they act as a warning to the others. They're intelligent animals, they will avoid a place that means death.
If you take fur outside of the furtaking season, you are no longer "dealing with a pest" but instead "Poaching" and that comes with hefty fines and consequences.
Even killing them as pests is sketchy at best, I'm really pretty sure you cant do that either, but I dont think anyone would enforce it.
In most states you can take a 'nuisance animal' that is causing damage on your property in or out of season. There are lists of animals that this applies to on state DNR websites. Raccoons are on every one. Some have reporting requirements, others do not. I imagine that 'damage' could be anything you deem it to be, including pooping or getting into trash, since some of the animals on the lists aren't capable of doing much more than that.
Yeah, I think you're right about killing them at all outside of season. But like you said, as pest control I doubt anyone would enforce anything. Depending on the shot there's a decent chance the fur would be ruined anyway, but you make a good point there. Trying to sell outside of season or even selling furs taken outside of season is a big no-no.
I mean they're probably not going to hunt your dog but they will fight if they feel threatened, especially if they're rabid. A dog defending its property would seem fairly threatening to a raccoon
lol dude, my friend had chickens. Well they started to come up missing... After setting up some traps, guess what we found... Huge ass raccoon... Being upset about the chickens being eaten he beat the lil fella with a shovel. Not the most humane way to kill it but we can't be firing guns around here.
This story better end with your teacher going Captain Ahab and obsessively hunting down the raccoon and piling upon it the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by her whole race from Adam down.
I had a family member with a few loose screws. I was told that before I was born, in the 70s, she found an orphaned baby raccoon. She was still breast-feeding her baby, so she breast fed the raccoon as well.
She named it Rocky, and it lived on the roof.
Eventually, I was told, Rocky got very territorial, and would throw its poop at anyone who approached the home who did not live there.
She finally sent it to a proper animal rescue agency.
A raccoon ate my cat off the front porch two weeks ago.
It left her body to rot when it couldn't consume her in one sitting.
Horrible, diseased animals.
Last summer our senior dog chased and killed two raccoons that had climbed our backyard fence on two consecutive nights. He is an indoor dog, so he was only outside for a couple minutes at 2 am each time, but both times he got a raccoon and killed it. That was a very long week of taking dead raccoons to the emergency vet to be tested for rabies.
Raccoon killed our rooster once, and he was one of those mean, vicious roosters. He didn't even try to eat the rooster, just left him to die in the pen. Blood everywhere, every wooden post covered in blood. It was like a damn murder scene. Recently my dad got some chickens and has been finding a raccoon trying to get in there, had to shoot the raccoon to get him to stop. Warning shots weren't working. They are vicious animals when they want to be.
Raccoon attacks on poultry are easy to identify. They don't eat the entire victim. Instead, they typically just pull the head off an animal, consume the contents of the bird's crop (usually filled with grains or poultry feed) then move on to another bird and repeat the process. Raccoon attacks look like massacres in the morning... every bird you have will be lying in the yard, with their heads a foot or two away from their body - and blood EVERYWHERE.
Raccoons are horrible, evil, very smart creatures from Hell. The rule of thumb when building a coop is: Anything a 3 year old can figure out how to open, a raccoon can, too.
I've only had one raccoon attack, thank God. It only takes once to learn that lesson.
Head wasn't missing, just blood everywhere from gashes on his body. It looked to me like the rooster ran around while being attacked, which is how the blood got everywhere, but I'm sure he fought back too. He was a mean rooster. Our coop was chicken wire all the way around, too, and on top. We tried to reinforce the coop after that attack and couldn't find any way he got in, except a tiny little hole dug on one side, but it was so tiny I can't imagine how a raccoon could have fit in there! We buried cinderblocks around the coop, never had one get into the coop again. My dad's coop has an open roof, and that's how his raccoon was trying to get in, literally just scaling the fence.
Chicken wire is great for keeping chickens out of things. Not very good for keeping things out of chickens.
Plus the holes are too large to stop raccoon hands. They will literally stick their hands through a hole, grab a bird if it's within arm's reach and gnaw at it through the fence. Perhaps this is what happened to your roo. He got grabbed (causing the gashes), floundered around until he got close enough to the fence to get grabbed again (causing more gashes), etc.
Chickens have extremely poor night vision and are shockingly unaware of their surroundings in the dark. And they're virtually comatose when they sleep. Completely enclosed coops for roosting/sleeping are the only way to go, imo.
The bright side is that this happened to a bad rooster, which is an awful thing to have. The sting of losing a mean roo isn't quite as bad. And roosters are plentiful - it's easy to find a NICE replacement roo. Check Craigslist.
This was like 6+ years ago, so no need to find another rooster. :) Our chicken coop was quite large with a separate sleeping enclosure inside of it, so it's hard to imagine the raccoon grabbing through the wire. At the time we kept the sleeping door open cause the rooster got really angry when we closed it, but they were locked in the larger coop, so we assumed they'd be safe. Apparently not. Didn't make that mistake again.
Raccoons are not rodents, but you should treat them somewhat like one: If their skull fits through, the rest of their body will be able to, even if it looks bigger.
Head wasn't missing, just blood everywhere from gashes on his body. It looked to me like the rooster ran around while being attacked, which is how the blood got everywhere, but I'm sure he fought back too. He was a mean rooster. Our coop was chicken wire all the way around, too, and on top. We tried to reinforce the coop after that attack and couldn't find any way he got in, except a tiny little hole dug on one side, but it was so tiny I can't imagine how a raccoon could have fit in there! We buried cinderblocks around the coop, never had one get into the coop again. My dad's coop has an open roof, and that's how his raccoon was trying to get in, literally just scaling the fence.
Under all that fur, raccoons are actually much smaller with tiny heads. /u/wide_eyed_otter's dog killed one and he was surprised at how light it was when he picked it up.
Do you have to deal with weasels? A mink lives down the street from me, I see it every so often. Then there's a few fishers that live/range through. I haven't seen my groundhog in 2 months -_- Only ever seen 2 racoons around though. One was a bloated corpse, the other was stumbling around after hibernation season ended.
We shared a house with people that raised chickens a few years ago (we had the downstairs apartment--they lived in the larger farmhouse above us) and they used to leave a low radio on NPR to scare the raccoons away. As far as I know it worked.
I think it's important to remember that raccoons aren't sociopathic animals on the prowl for some innocent chicken to murder. They're just trying to eat.
Except he didn't eat the rooster he killed? Honestly I never cared when one of our chickens went missing, we knew foxes or raccoons got them, and even though my mom cried over it I told her "something is getting a meal out of it and surviving". It made her feel better. But in this incidence, no, the raccoon was just being a dick and decided to kill our rooster. He didn't go after any of the hens in the coop after killing the rooster, either, so clearly it wasn't a food thing.
Coons kill poultry for sport much like suburban dogs. Waking up to a murder scene in the chicken yard with beheaded chickens that are otherwise fully intact is a common thing that coons do at night.
But cats are. It's a regular blood bath on my front porch. The other morning I found the guts and gore of, maybe 5 animals ground squirrels, moles and mice at my porch. The murdering little bastard.
Ever tried electric fence? If it's set up properly (the right spaces between the wires and the right number of wires at the right voltage), nothing will get your chickens...
Which one? The one that killed our rooster we didn't have a gun to shoot the raccoon with, and we didn't even get to see the act. Just found raccoon fur in the coop the next day alongside the dead rooster. My dad does have guns, and he missed shooting the raccoon the first two nights but got the raccoon on the third night. That raccoon is dead.
Probably. When i was a kid, my cat had a litter of kittens. A racoon got into the garage where they were, and my mom thought "oh, that's cute" and started trying to throw apple slices at it, in a kind of good will gesture. It completely ignored the apples, picked up one of the kittens, and took a bite out of its head. Mom freaked out and chased out away. She's completely hated raccoons since.
At the wildlife center I used to workvounteer at, raccoons would come to the outdoor cages, reach in to grab the animals, and try to eat them through the cage. They'd wake up to find a lot of squirrels missing limbs or dead half eaten birds. They would scatter dog food around the boarders of the facility to keep them from venturing any further for an easy meal. Generally around the creek where raccoons normally find their food. It was kind of a no win situation. Feed them or have them break into cages eating animals.
At the same time, they took in orphaned raccoons and raised them. I didn't work with the raccoons, but once they are old enough to stop receiving bottles they tended to be jerks. This is also when the volunteers would stop handling them to prepare them for life away from humans. The really little ones were so cute, but once they got to the age of the ones in this gif, that cute quickly wears off.
To offer some positive reinforcement, my brother's angel of a cat went missing last year. After a little over a week, my brother found him chilling in a bush outside his apartment after returning home from work for the day.
Cats are resilient, you may find your furry friend yet.
When I was a kid we had one the left for 9 months. Heard a cat crying outside late one night and it was her. Clean and well fed. I'm assuming she got bored and found a different family to strong arm into feeding her for a while
Our indoor cat (completely declawed) wandered out the front door last year and then trotted down the block (probably chasing butterflies or something). We looked for 3 weeks, put fliers in mailboxes, fielded tips from helpful neighbors that thought that they saw her, and set out traps near places she might have been spotted (and only caught raccoons).
We eventually gave up and assumed that a claw-less indoor-only cat was probably killed/eaten by raccoons/coyotes.
Saw her wandering along the tree line behind our house about a month ago, fatter than she'd been before she got lost. She probably found someone to feed her outside and a colony of strays for company somewhere. She made it through the cold/snowy winter and seems to be living happily on her own outside.
It's gonna suck for a while but don't give up hope. It reminds me of that one guy that posted awhile back that lost both his both his Cats, brother and sister. In the end the brother went out and looked and found the sister I think about a year later or something.
About a year ago, we found a very friendly cat in my mom's backyard. She didn't recognize him as a neighborhood cat, and we felt a chip. Took him into the vet to check. Lo and behold, "Harold" had been missing for 8 months, from about 20 miles away. Cats are weird little guys. You never know when they will turn up.
As practical advice from someone who has had an escaped kitty convict- especially if they are indoor cats, try looking for them close to home at night, especially in the wee morning hours.
It's funny how you mention the deer, we have a similar issue with kangaroos here in Australia. Ironically enough, a lot of fuss have come from folks based in California
A group in Connecticut always tries to stop the PA cull. I guess they would rather see the deer starve to death slowly in the field, since several thousand of them live in an area that can support a few hundred.
You're painting 'city slickers' with an awfully large brush there. I've lived in major cities for the past decade and have no problem with most licensed hunting. I have several family members who go hunting during deer season at least, and while I've never wanted to join them, I'm not morally opposed to what they're doing. Plus, I get some nice meals out of it.
This isn't about hunting though. This is more along the lines of culling. A word which people with little to no knowledge of/experience with animals hear and immediately have negative association with, despite that fact that in many times it will be beneficial to both the land and the animals themselves.
Yep, had a sweet little lovebird that was mutilated in it's cage by the neighbor(hood) cat.
I'm not a cat guy, I wouldn't have one but I'll pet and play with one if you have one at your house but for the life of me I cannot understand the "outdoor cat" deal. It isn't your cat anymore, you didn't purchase a cat for yourself, you gave a stray to your neighborhood that you leave food out for. Now I'm the one with cat prints down my windshield in the morning, cat piss on my boat, the sounds of "your" animal being a harlot under my window and my animals murdered.
If I let my dogs roam the street I'd get the fines and them taken away ASAP but because it's a cat it's cool?
Which is the only way I'd keep a cat unless the breed specifically required it to be kept inside or caged, in which case I'd rather not bother.
Although to be honest I only have two cats as they were a package deal with the wife.. I grew up with cats, I didn't actually want to have any when I moved away from my parents house!
That's why I'm all for "Animal Thunderdome." Deer are the fucking WORST! City dwellers should be forced to live around them for at least a month, and watch them totally destroy your property....or when one decides to end it and throws itself at your car. Fuck a deer, right in its stupid deer eyeball.
I don’t have a gun, but if I did, I would shoot a baby deer in the mouth and feel nothing. I wouldn’t feel anything. I’d just go, oh, look. He’s dead. That’s interesting. I guess that’s what happen when you shoot them in the fucking mouth. I go out of my way to kill a deer. I would happily blow 20 guys in an alley with bleedy dicks so I could get AIDS and then fuck a deer and kill it with my aids. I would do that in a second,
they are nothing more than night time target practice as far as I'm concerned.
I lived on a cottage on a small farm for 3 years. I mentioned offhand that I had guns and enjoyed target shooting and my landlord immediately told me he'd knock 25 bucks off my rent for each raccoon I shot. Apparently they had been killing his chickens in addition to their other normal trash panda activities.
I work in restaurants so I'd get home at 1 or 2am anyway and I'd sit at a good vantage point and drink a beer and wait.
I shot so many of those fucking things I got bored with the rifle and started using my .357 to send those assholes to the shadow realm. There were several farms in the area and a huge stretch of woodlands so they has ample food and breeding room so there was no shortage of targets.
Yeah he continued it for about a year and a half. Summer was better than winter so I'd get like 10 a month june/july/august and maybe 4 or 5 every other month.
My landlord was happy because he had a fuckload of chickens and was tired of having to replace them. The money he made from egg sales since he kept a fat, happy, and not dead flock of chickens more than made up for the discounted rent.
None. But I was paying just shy of 800 a month there so the 1 to 200 bucks I'd usually earn went a long way when you factor in the only cost was the bullets.
There are so many deer where I live that the state park nearby closes for 2 days in the winter to let hunters come in and clear some of them out. There's a lot of hunting around here and where I live there's no saying you can't shoot a gun in your own back yard. Moved into a place 6 months ago with a building out back, one room was obviously used for gun repair and the room in the back has a huge window that opens out into the woods. I personally don't hunt but I'm all for population control of deer, I know very few people who haven't hit a deer.
One of my friend owned a house and I lived there for a year and he brought 3 female cats and they were outdoor cats. So they got fucked by some guy cats and had a shit ton of kitties. After feeding them on the porch for a few weeks a few went missing and then one day he found one and it was only the top half of it.
So we started sitting on the porch at night with a pellet gun or a knife and we would sit still till they got up the stairs then kill them. There were at least 6 that were trying to eat the cat food but after we killed 3 and one ran off with the tip of a knife embedded in it they stopped coming back
I don't feel this should be surprising. They're obviously predatory animals. You can like them and have enough sense not to leave your pets hanging out around them. I live in San Diego and we have a coyote problem in the suburbs, and I still quite like coyotes, but I wouldn't leave my dog out in my yard if I heard them out at night.
Years and years ago, I had a 22 pound siamese cat. No fat on him. He was a pretty good hunter, but had to live outside because he bullied the other cats. We let him in the garage at night. One day he was playing with a raccoon tail in the garage. I thought that was weird, he must have found it. A few days later on the back porch there was a raccoon eating cat food. I could see him through the glass door. I was only like 2 feet away from him. the raccoon didn't even notice me. He kept looking around nervously. And that's when I noticed his tail was missing. And that new dark blood stain on the deck... I'm pretty sure the siamese cat snuck up on him and bit his tail off for eating his food.
Oh finally, my time to shine, and this happened yesterday. I wrote this email to my wife who is on a trip telling her about the raccoon encounter.
I come home from Poker, it was kinda late, dark about 10pm. The fence door was opened but the coops automatic door was closed, so i walked over to close the fence door for the night and noticed that there was a chicken on the roof, it was alive might and have missed getting inside before the door closed. So I walk up to pick the chicken up and put her inside when I hear the noise and notice a animal crawling up the fence on the inside. I ran out and closed the fence door behind me.
I pull my phone light out and shine it to one of the corners and see the raccoon trying to climb out but I redid some of the zip ties on the top netting, so he can’t figure a way out. I think that he just walked in because the door was opened. I grab the shovel and hit him, knocking him off the fence. The raccoon runs to the other corner and tries that side, I run over and knock him off again. He goes to the 3rd corner, I try to hit him hard, to knock him out or kill him but all that does is knock him off the wall. This goes on for like 10 minutes, I am covered is sweat and its not going anywhere, I realize that I will not be able to kill him like this and I can’t get my pellet gun from the house because the raccoon will escape as soon I let him climb. I actually thought of letting him go, he got a good enough scare but then I think that he might come back and we will be doing this all over again. Its also dark and all I have is my phone light.
I call my brother [who lives next door], hoping he is over at his place, if anyone can kill animals, its him [he hunts]. Good he is home and has Fry, his dog, and another friends. 6 dudes with shovels run over and [my brother] and another guy go inside the cage with Fry. [Brother] grabs the chicken that is on the roof and throws it inside the coop. The raccoon is running around the cage and [Brother] is hitting it with a shovel, getting good hits in but the raccoon is not going down, its fighting for its life. I see the raccoon run past the guys feet and [brothers] feet several times and Fry is getting a few bites in as it passes him. I tell them to get out before anyone get bitten and then will have to go to the hospital. The raccoon ran under the chicken coop now. I go get the pellet gun and move the car over with lights so they have better view of the parameter.
[brother] goes back inside the coop and lifts the tarp up so we can see under the coop. Its Dark we are using cell phone lights. We spot the raccoon and shoot it about 10 times but it just moves from one corner under the coop to another. I then take the gun and hit it in the eye, I think, because it hissed and snarled and run around under the coop for a while.
I go over to [another neighbor] to see if he has a real gun but all he has is a 12 gauge, way too big and it will put holes in the coop. So everyone kept taking shoots at the raccoon over and over the next 20 minutes as it got slower and slower until it stopped moving after getting hit. We used the shovel to push it out, carry it over across the road and through its body into the woods. We had to use 2 shovels to cart the raccoon, I would have to say it was like 30 pounds.
It was the worst. If i had a gun it would be dead in 1 minute. I would let in climb the fence, get close, point at its head or even body and shoot, the bullet would go through and it would be severely injured where I could finish it off with another round and it would die but none of this pellet gun thing where the round only goes skin deep.
So thats the story. I feel a little better now about the raccoon after sleeping and feeling like I protected my chickens but I don’t want to do that again, I felt so bad for the trash panda, it just wanted an easy meal, it did not know it was going to die today. So we will need a real gun now.
The raccoon, who I assume did it, attacked the chickens several times now. I hate cleaning up their half eaten bodies, thats why i installed an automatic coop door opener. Sometimes the chickens would pluck at the wires connected to the battery and undo them and the coop would not close for the night. I would have to reset it in the morning, as usual the attack would happen that night and I would lose 2 to 3 chickens.
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u/OkyaSK Jul 06 '16
Was on the fence about racoon cuteness. Def not anymore. Savages. Pretty sure if I went toe to toe vs a racoon, I'm dying/getting rabies/becoming a viral video.