November 18, 2006

Life's Rocky with Raccoons ... trying to eat your best friend.
posted by beeswacky 18 years ago
  • Uncle bee brings anti-squee: raccoons, the cutest dang varmints there ever were. Creepy story!
  • What's your point?
  • This is the crux of the article:
    Communities around the country are plagued by destructive or aggressive raccoons, and many of them routinely trap, remove and even kill the animals. But this being California, the city's animal-control agency is instead urging people to try to get along with the raccoons — a notion that strikes some as political correctness gone wild.
    What's your opinion on the people/wildlife interface? Recommendations? What should be changed? Or not changed? Do ye like raccoons? Dislike raccooons? Have a raccoon anecdote? What do ye make of the Dalmation's behaviour? etc
  • Learn to keep your food in raccoon proof containers, if they annoy you then shoo them away. Live with them, don't wipe them out... Obv init?
  • Apparently not to everyone, if ye read the article.
  • Also, your solution is not going to be popular in areas where, unlike Vencie, rabid raccoons do attack folk.
  • Dang! here's the link was supposedly included in that last comment.
  • People who choose to live next to undeveloped areas are usually willing to share the space with wildlife, and to take proper precautions. Those who choose to live on the western edge of a cityscape where the concrete and asphalt run for 50 or more miles in the three directions that aren't ocean-fronted are probably not prepared to do so. Racoons are cute, not to mention inventive and smart, but they're still wild animals. (If they were domesticated, they might be the best pets ever.) It seems to me that the agency would be well advised to take some action that might inconvience the raccoons before one of them feels threatened by a kid from one of those houses and does a number on him/her.
  • I don't know beeswacky, the idea that getting along with nature is a PC concept is a bit sad. Mice are not raccoons. I don't have raccoons where I live. I have mice though, I let them be. I can't prove it but I'm thinking they can feel. And that matters. The only thing I do, is tidy up, keep food away from them and such. Still to me humans matter more. Are you religious beeswacky? If not why does anything matter at all?
  • Obv kill kill kill those crazy rabid racoons. Where them like beaver pelts. [wear]
  • My opinion is that we should try to live in harmony with nature, but when an animal becomes a direct threat then we are justified in removing that threat. By taking out the emotional aspect of the humans vs animal thing, & just looking at it purely from an objective, logical viewpoint, this makes coming to a determination on what action to take much easier. If it is not possible to remove the threat, then the human should withdraw. Viz: bears or sharks!
  • Well, if to be a Buddhist is to be religious, yes, I am. Seems as if critters will increasingly need man's tolerance to survive. Some, like raccooons and oppossum and coyotes, seem to do a good job of it against rather long odds, but other species (black-footed ferrets, for instance, or the prairie chicken) don't. I don't know what the solution is, randomaction, or should be, either. Guess I don't care whether any given solution is politically correct or not, just so we don't loose any more species. One possibility could be to limit human fecundity. And to limit human encroachment into animal habitats as in theory we do now with parks in North America. But neither of those is going to be acceptable to all people or to those who envision profit in exploiting a park or a nature reserve.
  • randomaction: if you lived in my neck of the woods, you might feel differently. Hanta virus showed up here a few years ago, and I've never been able to trust a mouse since. Once you've got it, there is no real cure.
  • In Venice, at least, the stupid and selfish behavior of some people is a large part of the problem. The sensible advice and humane methods of control as suggested by the local wildlife authorities don't seem to me to be 'politically correct', just correct.
  • Where I live, I trap mice (kill them), my cat catches mice (ditto), I shoot squirrels that are trying to eat their way into my attic, and I shot a raccoon that was doing the same thing. I also place havahart traps so that I can export the wide variety of vermin that wish to domicile in my woodshed. This is the way it goes if one chooses to live in the country. Like Chyren said, direct threat. Conversely, I feed the birds and the chipmunks, and allow both to use parts of my house for their homes. They do not destroy my property. Plus, my dogs get good exercise in their (always failed attempts at) chasing down the chippies. Good neighbors, bad neighbors. That's the only distinction.
  • Chyren: By taking out the emotional aspect of the humans vs animal thing, & just looking at it purely from an objective, logical viewpoint, this makes coming to a determination on what action to take much easier. Does it? How? Without the emotional component why should I prefer my own daughter to a piece of dust? Humans massively over value logic at the expense of feeling. Emotion is seen as weak by many. I see emotion as the core of us, and our capacity for rational thought as the best of us. There are no missing pieces, evolution can't jump, it leaves no gaps.
  • I think we all agree that there are reasons to share our space with the denizens of the wild, it's finding the boudries that's difficult. Chyren is as emotional about animals as anyone I know, but he's right is saying that you have to gauge the level of threat. That strikes me as truly rational thought.
  • *hearts path*
  • I am *more* emotional about animals than most people, to an almost pathological degree, as it happens, but that doesn't mean I let disease-carrying bitey vermin overrun my place of abode. Several years ago I lived in an absolute flea pit in which two rats invaded & started living somewhere in the kitchen. Without any other course of action, I set rat traps & was aghast that they didn't die immediately (or at all, in fact, just being horrifically wounded). I had to dispatch them with a shovel, which left me horrified & guilt ridden for some time, but I still did what I had to do. "Without the emotional component why should I prefer my own daughter to a piece of dust?" Obviously you don't have to invoke emotionless logic in regards to your daughter, do you? Unless, say, she gets an horrific tumor in her brain or something where you have to decide to switch off the life support. This is all about *context*.
  • Here's a data point about the Venice raccoon situation. It's a human-populated area, surrounded on three sides by even more densely human-populated areas and on the fourth by the Pacific Ocean. The only way I see the raccoons could have entered the area was from the not-very-large Madrona wetlands and passing through Marina Del Rey (a mass of people and concrete). So they really don't have much of anyplace else to migrate to naturally. And if every resident was consistent in locking up the pet food and the trash, they'd go from just raccoons to starving raccoons. And then become more dangerous to any animal (or human) small enough to be a potential community meal. That is not an "edge of town" situation. I, on the other hand, am at the southern edge of San Luis Obispo with miles of non-human-populated hills between me and Pismo Beach (and the Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant), some of which have cattle grazing on them. Our enclave has a community trash dumpster that is always wide open, yet the largest wild animals I've encountered in the last year are average-sized mousies (plus some much smaller non-mammalian pests, most notably spiders ... ewwwww) and I wish I knew why we don't have the entire cast of "Over the Hedge" in our back yard.
  • wendell: SLO still has a lot of wild space around it, so maybe they aren't forced to forage elsewhere. Or, maybe agriculture has eliminated pesky vermin. Might be a good question to ask the good folks at Cal Poly.
  • San Luis Obispo & Pismo Beach have always had a place in my heart. Not because I've ever been there, just because the names sound so great.
  • This, from someone who lives near Lake Disappointment, Meekatharra, Kalgoorlie, Cocklebiddy, and if those aren't exotic-sounding enough -- Purnululu (Bungle Bungle) National Park! When I was a kid in California, I thought Alameda de las Pulgas sounded wonderfully exotic. Then they insisted we learn some Spanish; it means Avenue of the Fleas, which discovery subtracted from the grandeur of it a trifle.
  • Well path I guess I can agree. If the ting is minging then I be killin'. Sad thing is our attitudes can only exacerbate the depletion of diversity. When you and I are dead, and our children have children, the only living things other than humanity will be those we specifically let live, and those we have failed to kill. From industrial farming to antibiotics, humans love control.
  • Understand your feelings very well and in fact share them to a considerable degree. One hopeful thing the internets seems to be doing for the world is revealing the shallowness, hypocrisy, greed, and venality of the world's so-called leaders. So I figure one of these days humanity might just decide to do something constructive about the environment, the always pointless wars that do nothing but degrade everyine involved with 'em, and these overweeningly greedy corporations and so on, randomaction. Anyhow, rather than just say, All broken. Can't be fixed! I act on this assumption.
  • Coons are scary when they come up and bang on your windows at night.
  • Raccoon in the trash? O collie pup, do nothing rash! Or else we'll have to shut you up! ;]
  • Garbage thief! Print 'em. Then book 'em, Danno.
  • Hmmm... maybe we should unleash the greedy raccoons on the greedy corporations? Set a thief to catch a thief, and all that. What I like best about the article is that they recommend talk radio to frighten raccoons. Eat NPR, suckas!
  • Fascinating that Venice, California is now handling this matter in accordance with ahimsa. Wondering whether any other municipality or administration has done so.
  • Raccoon by Anne Sexton Coon, why did you come to this dance with a mask on? Why not the tin man and his rainbow girl? Why not Racine, his hair marcelled down to his chest? Why not come as a stomach digesting its worms? Why you little fellow with your ears at attention and your nose poking up like a microphone? You whig emblem, you woman chaser, who do you dance over the wide lawn tonight clanging the garbage pail like great silver bells?
  • Dalmations have spots some have a few and some have lots
  • I once had some very tame, fat raccoons hanging around. They had quintuplets. And the seven of them used to hang around. Did I mention they were tame? You couldn't get them to run. And I lived in an area where rabies is a threat. If you banged on the window, they'd make faces at you. If you sprayed them with the hose, they'd stand on their hind feet and make rude gestures. I finally just gave up and made sure to avoid them. (And they were awfully cute!)
  • Rat killing seems a lot easier to do than squirrel or raccoon killing; it's all about how furry your tail is.
  • Raccoon: 1, Pervert: 0 (from above) Path quotes Chyren: I think we all agree that there are reasons to share our space with the denizens of the wild, it's finding the boundaries that's difficult. Chyren is ... right in saying that you have to gauge the level of threat. Something this fella didn't do at all well. Bwwaaahahahahahahahahah!!