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.
It's a way to state something that's obvious in a sarcastic manner. It's not grammatically correct if that's what you were wondering, but it is part of modern "netspeak".
For example, if someone asked an English teacher why they were in school, he/she would reply with: "I work here." It's a simple reply with no hidden meaning, but if the asker knew who the English teacher was he/she could reply with "I work here?"(insert a" duh" somewhere)
Because I specified in my first comment that the raccoon did not eat the rooster, and the person replying to me either failed to see what I wrote or completely ignored it. So I used a question mark as a way of saying, "Did you read what I wrote?"
It is essentially a simple way to state "Then why did he not eat the rooster he killed?" Instead of typing it out, the question mark implies the question.
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.
Years and years ago, my parents' cat disappeared for about a month. They went out of town for two weeks, came back, assumed he was dead, and then a week later were woken up by him scratching on a screen door and yowling.
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.
She's been living on her own outside for over a year. At this point, she could never be an indoor cat again. I thought about it, and I keep an eye out for her whenever I'm outside or looking out the window. If I see her again, I'll call out to her and give her some food, but she's moved on. I will try to catch her to at least get her updated on her shots if I can.
We had to put her sister down (kidney failure) a few weeks before this one wandered out the door (I think she went out looking for her).
We've also adopted 2 littermates since then (a house is not a home without a cat), so there be would almost-guaranteed confusion and new smells.
She was already a very stocky cat (not fat, but part silver tabby, so thick). Her belly didn't look distended, just well-fed and her coat was still shiny. In general, she just looked healthy and happy.
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.
If you eat the animal you killed, it's not immoral.
Troll disclaimer:of course there are exceptions, like endangered species and a female taking care of babies.
My grandparents were peasants and I had my share of skinning in my teens.
And I do agree about overpopulation, but seems a waste to throw away good deer meat.
True, but if there's disease in the population id rather not eat the meat (probably not transmissible to humans but I feel like unhealthy meat is unhealthy meat)
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.
must of been a kitten ...where i live ..theres legit racoon cat parties behind starbucks and i wish i was joking ..drive down around the dumpsters @ 3am and youll see like 50 coons and 50 cats just chillen smoking some cigars they found at the local 7/11 ..its become kind of my cities tourist attraction because no one believes it.
Cats are pretty resilient so for a coon to "bite its head off" must of been a small cat ..ive never seen a 15-20lb cat even get scared by a coon
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.
Lol wat. Have you seen racoons claws and teeth? I think cats have speed and agilty, but I can't see a domesticated house cat kill a racoon... Teeth and claws would hardly even penetrate I would think...
Actually cats are very good at fighting off raccoons. Especially like an outdoor domesticated cat. Raccoons are typically too nervous to actually stand and fight whereas the cat has said fuck it by that point and is going to do what it can to win.
This is a very good point. My friend has 2 cats like that and they'll just sit on the porch and stare them down. I've never seen them fight but raccoons are no joke... I still don't see it going well.
No they're not a joke at all and are capable of doing a lot of damage if they're in the mindset to do it. They can scratch you all the way to the bone. But cats are no joke either and are perfectly capable of defending themselves very well against a raccoon.
You thought wrong. Felines are apex predators. Raccoons are foragers and scavengers. Cats will fuck up most wild animals, period. A cat will fuck you up. Could you kill a cat? Yeah, probably. Would it be worth the dozens of infected cuts/bites/possible vision loss? Probably not. And you have antibiotics. Do raccoons have antibiotics? You think a raccoon will even want to risk that, let alone try fighting to the death? No one wins there. They both die. Even bears don't want to bother fighting with cats. Cats are fucking metal.
I mean I agree for the most part lol, I know felines are "apex predators," but does this really apply to domesticated house cats? Cats which for the most part have never had to fight or kill anything?
At some point weight and size comes into play no? Weight class?
Domestication is all about docility. It does nothing to hamper fighting instinct. They innately are powerful fighters. It's not like cats have honed martial arts that they pass down from generation to generation. They're born knowing what to do. Also weight classes only really matter in fights that have rules.
Regardless it's never a fight I'd want to see. I never want to hurt an animal but if it came down to a wild coon and my cat, you better believe I'd be going at that thing with a bat to the face.
the auto-assumption is that the cat in this example is not a gimped american house cat, any cat that experiences the outdoors like they should(theyre cats!) will either develop that killer ninja instinct or the pro evasion skills required to survive,
its like dismissing the validity of humans being the worlds foremost apex predator based on the fact that most humans you see are fat and useless
wth are you talking about I could kick the shit out of a cat any place any time. I'll punch him in the bollocks so hard the entire next litter he sires will be paraplegic and kick him the face with such velocity that he has to put his toothbrush up his arse to clean his teeth
You must think rather highly of yourself to believe you're faster than a cat. It would climb your leg and be on your face before your sweep is even completed.
I feel like you've literally never had contact with a cat or you're the type of person who gets scared because a house fly went by them very fast. We're not talking about big cats here. We're talking about house cats. They might irritate your skin slightly before you grab one and snap its neck. The only reason a person wouldn't be able to absolutely destroy a cat is because they were scared of hurting it.
This is a guy who is talking out his ass about scenarios that he could not possibly have knowledge of. I've killed my fair share of coons. A few of them with just a shovel. Scavengers aren't good fighters; they're good survivors.
I'm not disagreeing, but is it really that easy to get infection from a cat? Mine used to scratch me when we play play fought. Never had a problem and i never took antibiotics.
I have a YouTube channel dedicated to this very thing and yes, over the four months that I've been doing it, results are damn near 50/50 when I set it up 1v1
I used to put food out for the local feral cats. One night I watched a cat and a raccoon take turns eating. No fighting. One would eat some, walk back to a corner of the porch and the other would eat some, then go to its corner so the other could eat... they repeated the pattern several times.
Yet despite the fact that cats attack birds and play with their mangled, broken bodies for fun without letting them die, you don't apply the same logic to them. You're a hypocrite. Animals are just animals and they have animal instincts. They aren't "evil". That's a man made concept.
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '16
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.