Dead or alive, raccoons suck

We get a lot of wildlife in our yard (see this post for more details). Most of it is awesome to see, and now that we have a dog it provides great entertainment as he "protects" us all from the squirrels and ducks and whatnot. But nobody was too pleased when a family of raccoons moved in to the space under my neighbor's deck a few years ago. If you don't have raccoons where you live, they are evil, rabies-infested, trashcan-attacking psychos.

We all basically hated a feared the raccoons, especially when they started to procreate. You see, the baby raccoons were adorable. Too adorable. I lived in fear that my children would toddle over to the cute little fur balls and be attacked by the protective mama raccoon. We tried our best to at least keep the beasts out of our yard and away from the children. At one point we resorted to throwing tea candles at them to get them down of our pergola.

One guy in the neighborhood apparently got fed up enough to really do something (or at least something more serious that pelting them with berry-scented wax). He put some poison out in his back yard. Poison is bad, y'all. I don't know why people every buy the stuff. You know what happens when you set out animal poison? An animal dies. You don't know which animal. You don't know how many animals. And you especially don't know where they end up dropping dead. That last part is key.

We didn't actually know he'd put out poison until one hot and steamy summer day (yes, Minnesota does get hot) when we discovered a giant, bloated raccoon corpse on our lawn. There were maggots. You could smell the thing from the house. My husband bravely disposed of the body, which was apparently half melted into the grass (gag). Later that week we found another one by the side of the road (where we were taking a nice family walk). We didn't clean that one ourselves, we let the city take the hit there.  We haven't had raccoons for a while, but if we do, my biggest concern will no longer be the stripe-tailed buggers themselves but what kind of corpse I may find if our neighbor plays animal god again.

(oops I totally forgot about the A to Z swearing challenge. Raccoons are real dick sucking elephant fuckers aren't they? Bam.)

13 comments:

  1. And that's why poison is never a good option, kids. At least they haven't died inside the walls. Wait, I haven't jinxed you, have I?

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    1. oh god I hope you didn't jinx me. *knocking on wood* I've had my fair share of dead mice in my walls.

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  2. Gross. Did you try live animal traps? I don't know how good of a solution that would be, but it has to be better than finding bloated animal corpses willy nilly.

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    1. I thought of that, but I couldn't do much once I released it... where? so I think I'll stick to the tea candle bit.

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  3. That is an awesome picture of a raccoon. But it doesn't have nearly enough maggots.

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    1. Well, you should have taken a picture. I only smelled it, I didn't get close enough to see the maggots.

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  4. We had an 'infestation' of raccoons and baby raccoons in our yard. I called the city and they recommended a company to come out and trap the animals and take them elsewhere. It worked until after their having vacated the premises an oppossum moved in to our backyard and under our back deck. At least he doesn't scatter trash all over the back deck and kill my shiny goldfish in my small pond.

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    1. oppossums are pretty creepy too. I watched the Dirty Jobs episode on trapping raccoons, and they didn't barely take the animals 10 yards from the houses, I'd be afraid they wouldn't do anything but drop them in the park, which isn't any furthur than the neighbor's house...

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  5. Not all raccoons have rabies, and I don't really see them as evil. They eat mice and pesky insects, so there is some kind of a plus to them.

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    1. But if they bite you you still have to get the rabies shots, which apparently really suck. I prefer my mice be controlled by the lovely and amazing birds of prey we have here (hawks and owls)

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  6. Oh, that must've been some sight -- a raccoon corpse. We have skunk in our neighborhood, and a visit leaves quite the "impression."

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    1. oh dear, that sounds worse than raccoons, and I can only imagine how backa rotting skunk would smell. ick!

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