Raccoon Nation..coming to your neighborhood.

Ozarkgal

Ozarkgal

Senior Member
Location
Deep in the Ozark woods
I just watched a documentary called "Raccoon Nation"...I'm doomed! I've posted on here several times this summer about my ongoing war with the raccoon population this year. I trapped and relocated 13 rackys within a few weeks. Things have slowed down now, I think, but maybe because I threw up my hands and closed my eyes.

This documentary was primarily about how raccoons are now not only thriving in large cities, but their numbers are booming as they adapt to their urban environment. The biologists live trapped, tranqed and put computerized radio collars on several coons and tracked their behavior. What they found is that raccoons have a small territory that they cover, have learned to stay away from streets, as they now see cars as predators, stick to neighborhoods instead of parks, because food is abundant, and can learn to open just about anything short of a padlock, devised to keep them out. In fact, the escalated challenges devised to keep them out of trash cans,food bins and building nesting are making them smarter and even more adaptable. It was amazing to see how smart the critters are in getting things open and squeezing and climbing into places.

This boom in the raccoon population is happening in all major cities, and they called Toronto the raccoon capital of all major cities, having an urban population of 50 times the number in the city as in the surrounding countryside...how they came up with that number they didn't explain.

The major problem raccoons create aside from expensive damage to homes and buildings, is the disease they carry. They carry a strain of distemper which is not species specific, but can be transmitted to other animals, including your dogs and cats even though they may have been vaccinated.

Also, roundworms larvae they shed in their feces, while they do not affect the host raccoon, can cause various organ damage, including eyes and brain, both in humans and animals. The larvae can remain dormant in the ground for years, unaffected by weather conditions until a host comes along.

I caught this documentary on Netflix if anyone is interested in watching it. It was also on the Nature series.
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What...no racky's in Aussieland yet? Not to worry, they are spreading rapidly, and sooner or later an exotic animal entrepreneur will think there's a market and smuggle a breeding pair in to sell the babies as pets, or a pregnant female will jump a freighter and hitch a ride. They are amazingly adaptable, so no doubt it won't be long before you'll have your share. They can even hang upside down, so living down under won't be a problem.:playful:
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I live in the real country and this year I have seen way too many racoons..
I do get rid of them but not the proper way.. Unfortunately, I have 2 methods of getting rid of them.. Both are fast and painless..

One is a killer trap that snaps their neck..
Second is poison containing warfarin..

I know this isn't the best way, but I have NO options and it works.........

I also have a .22 that is also very effective.. Especially with hollow points.......
 
We had a lot around the neighborhood years back, something kept breaking into our garage and eating the dry dog food at nighttime. Hubby rigged up a trap on the doorknob, so we could see what was coming into the garage at night. Well, we saw the raccoon, it got scared and climbed up the wall to the rafters and gave my hubby a golden shower, LOL! We decided to just open the door again, and let him out on his own terms. :p
 
Customs are nazi level fanatical here about imported wildlife so hopefully they won't get through. So far we don't have a single Hamster in the country out of secured confinement. Come to think of it, I don't recall them even being in zoos.
Never seen a Racoon either.
But we already have just about every other international pest, camels, horses, (brumbies) donkeys,water buffalo,wild cattle, foxes,cats,rabbits goats,deer,dogs,rats, mice, and pigs running about feral and murdering the native species and/or laying waste to the landscape, pity customs weren't so rigid a century and a half ago.

We have one big problem keeping them under control that you don't. Strict gun laws! Easier for rural producers to get but forget it unless you have a few hundred productive acres to protect or join an authorized gun club. Semi autos and up are banned outright. ..I have no problem with that.

We could wipe out a lot of the ferals with a few more organized shoots but people all get the vapours at the thought of of some 'lunatic with a gun' in a National Park and it becomes a political bun fight while the animals continue breeding up. I know a lot of people with guns and not a lunatic among them, but city people get antsy about it. I think they have a 'Bambi' complex. Most have never even seen a feral animal and what it can do the native wildlife and livestock.

Funny that the drive by shootings don't upset 'em as much as seeing off a few marauding dog packs by experienced shooters with rifles, but there you go, no accounting for how some people think. Illegal Saturday night specials don't scare them as much as someone with a hunting rifle apparently. I know who I'd rather trust. :glee:

While I approve of the stricter gun controls overall, I think they go overboard here on where, and which, people can hunt what.
It's complicated and 'local' so won't ramble about it. Just think some things would be better shot than let run wild.
 
Stinkerbell and Possum must keep Rocky away here, in the 18 years or so that I've lived here I have only seen 'coons 5 or 6 times.

It's questionable whether Skunks are better neighbors than 'Coons though, they don't do as much property damage but "Oh that Aroma":eeew:
 
I understand that Australia has the Common Brushtail Possum, which is basically equivalent to our 'coons.

I think raccoons are cute little critters, but then I've never had to deal with them either. Like deer, rats and other animal populations they've had to learn to adapt and endure in order to deal with the constant influx of humans into their habitats. I always enjoy how people complain about "pests", yet it was THEM who invaded THEIR homes. I can't say I would take too kindly to people claiming eminent domain on MY house, either ...

I've also always been amazed at how intelligent and dextrous raccoons seem to be - Nature's perfect thieves! :playful:
 
The possoms here are a mild nuisance, cheeky thieves but not aggressive, they're fairly timid and very tameable. (Max has piccys of his 'pets')
They wouldn't stand a chance against a Racoon, even house cats kill them. They're also totally nocturnal so they make noisy roof dwellers when they get in, but loveable little thieving fluffballs, seldom seen, in the main. Except in NZ where they are the 'feral' pests and caused untold damage to the forests over there. Don't know if NZ has tastier trees or what but they've made themselves really unpopular.

The 'pests' we have here are not in their habitat, they're all imported from elsewhere, mostly Europe but they're not to blame for the thousands of camels ripping up anything edible in the inland. The Afghanis brought them in to run camel trains into the Centre in the late 1800s before roads, and rail made it out that far. When civilization caught up they simply turned the camels loose and now we have the finest, healthiest camel herds in the world running wild and we catch and export them to the Middle East. Unfortunately not enough of them!

All native animals, except roos on rural land are protected as far as I'm aware. Even snakes. (We still knock them over if we find the dangerous ones in the wrong place but keep very quiet about it or the law and crowds of city Greenies will descend from a great height.)
Dingos aren't native, they were imported thousands of years ago by the Kooris
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No native fauna that I can think of is considered a pest except again the poor old roos, which come in their thousands onto crops and pastures in dry times. Can't blame them for that, but then again, we are partly at fault. There are more of them now than ever due entirely to bore water being available in remote areas where they simply couldn't survive before settlement.

We'd rather not swap our Possums for your Racoons, or that rather scary looking Opossum thanks very much. Not much call for Skunks here either come to think of it. :glee:
 
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We're having human and horse fatalities from Hendra virus (lyssavirus,) carried by fruit bats. Several people have died who had been in close contact with the horses.

Four horses died just last week about an hour south of here, near a relative's farm. He has no horses but a neighbour is very worried for theirs as the bats are in plague proportions everywhere, although not all colonies are infected. Those ones obviously are though. Luckily this time no people seem to have been affected by the outbreak.

This is only a fairly recent thing, never heard of by the public until a few years ago although it was identified in 1995. There's immunization for horses available now and no horses are accepted at meetings without the paperwork. It got among the racehorses and that put a scare into them enough to force immunization. Apparently humans aren't as valuable as racehorses.

It's a rabies like virus but we've never had any instance of rabies in OZ so it's a mystery where it came from or how it got into bats.

It's spread much the same way as your problem, through urine and faeces in pasture and feed being ingested by the horses, then acquired by those in close contact with the horses and from horse to horse.
There was a report that a young boy had died of a mystery illness which is now strongly suspected of having been the Hendra virus. He was scratched, but not bitten, by a bat but no one connected the scratch with the illness as it was unheard of that bats carried that type of disease. They now know better.

Bats are a protected species and are breeding in plague proportions due to increased food access and a lack of farmers being free to blow them out of the orchards with the double shotty.
They've moved into suburban areas in such numbers that they kill the trees they roost in then move on to kill others. The town I lived in previously had well over 2,000 of them in one small park in the centre of town, right next to the main highway. It was the most beautiful park with century old pines and other rare trees in it and was a tourist coach special interest stop, but not now. It is deserted. No one can go into the park for fear of getting bombed by the bats. The trees are all dying or dead from being constantly stripped of their leaves.
All 'humane' methods of moving them on have failed. They've won and the town has lost. When their roosts die and they lose the shade they'll move on somewhere else and leave the town a dead and dreary park to replace the magical one they had. And it's not the only town, many others are having the same trouble, some schools have to rope off part of their playgrounds so kids aren't exposed to the danger of the bats in their trees.

We're not talking cute little fluttery bats here, these things have always been called Flying Foxes because that's pretty much what they're like. The size of a cat with a head and teeth very like a fox. They have a huge wingspan, maybe 2 yards ? or more and they screech and scream and keep people awake and are a pox on the earth! Hate the damned things. There's a colony a few Ks south of here which flies over at dusk when the blueberries on a farm in the hills are ripening. They come in a column around 20 to 30 wide and I've watched that column for a full 20 minutes until it gets too dark to see them and it was still coming just as thick by then so there must be a couple of hundred thousand of them down there at least. No wonder bluberries are so expensive!

I forgot about bats when I couldn't think of any 'native' pests. But as they're not marsupials they're probably fly ins from Asia in the distant past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_bat_lyssavirus
Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV) (initially named pteropid lyssavirus PLV) is a zoonotic virus closely related to rabies virus. It was first identified in a 5-month old juvenile Black Flying Fox (Pteropus alecto) collected near Ballina in northern New South Wales, Australia in January 1995 during a national surveillance program for the recently identified Hendra virus.[SUP][1][/SUP] ABLV is the seventh member of the lyssavirus genus (which includes rabies virus) and the only lyssavirus family member present in Australia.
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Now these things we just might think about swapping those Racoons for. :cool:
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I've mentioned before in our previous discussion of these . . . "rascals" . . . that a momma tried to attack me when she moved under the house with her babies.

Cute . . . NOT!

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Pappy said:
Wow, what I am learning here today. Camels in Australia? I never knew. Opossum deadly to horses. The one problem we have with raccoons in this area are rabies. Quite a few cases this year.
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Quirky isn't it that the only wild (dromedary) camels left in the world are in OZ, of all places? :biggrin-new:

Entrepreneurs make a living from them, they tame a few and take tourists for rides in the desert. One bloke has a string of them on Cable Beach in WA. Not what I'd have thought was the 'Australian Experience' for tourists, but there you go.:cool:


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I remember being on one when the Zoo used to do camel rides for the kids, once was plenty for me thanks.
 
TWHRider said:
With all due respect --- keep those things to yourselves. I would rather have the raccoons and opossum - lol

We have a few "normal" bats but I've only ever seen a few. I don't know where they nest but as long as I only keep seeing 3 or 4 and they don't try moving into the barn rafters or the house attic, I'll leave them be.
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Bats are cool! They do a great job eating up mosquitos and I enjoyed watching them come out at night from under the Congress Street Bridge in Austin, TX. Saw those huge fruit bats in the South Pacific and I like 'em.
 
I have a friend who's dying to get a little fruit bat as a pet, but then she's pretty much fully tatted, pierced and Gothed up so I guess for her it would make sense. I'll have to tell her about these Flying Foxes. She'll probably want one.

I never knew Australia had camels either, much less giant bats that are terrorizing the population.

Yeah, given the particulars here I think I'd stick with the 'coons and possums too. :mask:
 
Well, the neighbor's dog got into it with a raccoon last night and she's just returned from the vet all stitched up. Poor thing. But . . . she is a dog and . . . raccoons are . . . bad news! @#%^&*!!!
 
That Guy said:
Well, the neighbor's dog got into it with a raccoon last night and she's just returned from the vet all stitched up. Poor thing. But . . . she is a dog and . . . raccoons are . . . bad news! @#%^&*!!!
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Poor girl..I hope she is okay...Coons can be very ferocious when cornered or protecting young.. Hope the coon doesn't return for round 2. Dogs seldom learn the error of their ways when it comes to chasing other animals.

I'm surprised my Ohno didn't get his clock cleaned by mamma when he grabbed the baby raccoon a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure the only thing that saved him was me being there with the spotlight.
 
Jillaroo said:
Oh the poor dog i do hope it's going to be ok
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Ozarkgal said:
Poor girl..I hope she is okay...Coons can be very ferocious when cornered or protecting young.. Hope the coon doesn't return for round 2. Dogs seldom learn the error of their ways when it comes to chasing other animals.

I'm surprised my Ohno didn't get his clock cleaned by mamma when he grabbed the baby raccoon a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure the only thing that saved him was me being there with the spotlight.
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Going to walk up the hill in a bit and check on her . . .

Whew, that was a quick trip up and back. Report is she's doing fine. Probably soaking up all the extra love and attention as if a dog can ever receive enough. Will talk to her the next time she's out and about.
 

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