Okay, who had cocaine racoons in Portland for September?
Based on various reports, it ‘appears’ the racoons are rummaging through the homeless areas looking for food and ‘other’ things…
If you haven’t ever seen racoons in action, they will tear the hell out of anything/everything going after what they perceive as food.
Down here we call them trash pandas, and I cannot imagine one on cocaine…
Shudder…
The rotten little trash pandas ripped siding off my house and moved into an attic crawl space. I shot two of them, but two got away, which was fine by me.
I recall reading about there being an imported raccoon problem in Japan, after some kids’ show featured a cute cartoon raccoon, prompting parents to buy one as a pet.
Years ago I read of “meth squirrels” in the UK. Tweaker in public parks, upon the approach of police, would press their vials into the softwood so as not to be caught with it if accosted and searched. When either ordered to move along or arrested for other matters, the local rodents learned to zero in on the disturbed soil and dig up the goods. They would then dovrather insane things after coming down an jonesing for another hit. One woman described a critter chewing through her siding and dry wall to enter and rummage around in bloodshot red-eyed despiration.
Typos: Tweaker[a] and “soft soil.”
Rabies would be a concern.
Apples as bait in the trap? No doubt organic and pesticide free.
Sweet Jesus don’t they have any country boys or girls in that neighborhood!
Never mind, it’s Portland and the smart folks have left.
I kept thinking Traps and Guns throughout that story. Then I remembered, to paraphrase, Forget it, it’s Portland.
I spent a summer getting rid of a colony of trash pandas that my hippie neighbors fed, then left. So the coons attacked my house.
I first was attacked when cleaning the pool. Beat it off and held it under water for 5 minutes. Damned thing drowned? No. It floated to the surface, snarled then went back to attacking me while I was beating the living dogstuffings out of it. It finally got bored and waddled off.
I then poisoned the damned thing with mole poison, but all that did was cause it to waddle around drunken for three days till it took a massive crap on my pool deck and was suddenly better.
War was thus declared as they tried to get into my house through my sidings and I ran around with a single-shot .22 Remington 510 rifle and pockets of ammo. Killed over 20 of the damned things.
Last one was the one that started it. 10 shots, all kill shots on a normal raccoon, to kill it. 4 head shots, 6 body shots.
I hate raccoons.
Had one of those bandits (real big one) decide to attempt to intimidate me on the back deck. He stood up and hissed at me and started walking toward me on his hind legs. Not normal action. I went inside to get a .22, and by the time I got back, he was gone. Figured he might have rabies.
No use to call the city for any action, as they are worthless. However, that particular problem was handled by a coyote pack that began hunting the cattle pasture across the street. No more bandits since then, and very very rare to see a possum. Possums and bandits were everyday visitors, cruising down the block, searching the backyards for pet food. Now I have to worry about running into a very large coyote (think a German Sheppard with coyote color and tail) after dark.
Your story reminds me of the “Jack Crow finds a nest of vampires” scene at the beginning of John Carpenter’s Vampires:
https://tinyurl.com/4dverj9e
Only vampire movie I ever really liked.
Now I’m thinking of similar sorts of action scenes, only involving raccoons as the target… and I’m smiling far too much here aren’t I?
I shot one with ‘SNAKE SHOT” IN 38 SHOTSHELLS THE OTHER DAY. POPPED HIM SEVERAL TIMES, HOPE HE’LL REMEMBER, BUT DARN, FORGET TO WEAR EARPLUGS!! eH, WHAT’D YOU SAY !!!
My experience is .22Short can make a one-shot kill. .22Long is more like it. .22LR is much better.
But coons? They are zombies in fur. Gotta get them in the braaaiiinnnsss and even then it’s not a sure kill.
.50BMG might, might be a bit too big. Though .50BMG snake shot…
12 gauge magnum loaded with 00 Buck might kill one, then again, might just defurr him.
Zombies. Zombies in fur.
All- I see I’m NOT the only one that has ‘experiences’ with trash pandas… I prefer a .45 to ‘end’ the issue myself…
The best coon problem solver I ever found was a large bobcat. It made short work of all the nuisance critters before moving on. Coons, and possums, eventually returned, but it took a long time.
I’ve waited in the evening, tried shooting them, but found the best way to get rid of coons is with a live trap. I bait with peanut butter in a bottle lid, and take care of them one at a time. You would think they’re smart enough to avoid the trap.
It appears that we have bred a new sub-species of racoon, one that is not afraid of dogs or people. I suspect that this is a result of a failure to kill off the aggressive ones. Previous generations just shot that uppity furry kritter and didn’t think anything of it.
These days (particularly in certain areas) the reaction is to either try to pet those menaces or back up going “ain’t he kuuuuuuute”. The report is about the NW but I would not be surprised to find the same problem in SF and LA and other urban areas with large urban outdoorsmen populations. Poorly protected food and other enticements, few individuals trained in wildlife management, and a large proportion of individuals unable to cope with any kind of disruptions in their routines. And what weapons there are are mostly intended for use on humans not animals.
Semi-related question: I believe that .45 will put one down but how about 9mm?
It’s the result of a failure to kill off the aggressive ones, and of people going overboard in training their dogs NOT to do what comes naturally with furballs that aren’t pets.
The dogs in the video are big, and if some critter was climbing up one of their humans, should have had no trouble with putting teeth into the thing’s spine, pulling it free, and shaking until the neck was broken. My dog Rose is half the size of those dogs, but she was having to find her own food (and not doing well) before we rescued her. I expect that faced with that raccoon, she’d get the first and only bite. It might even outweigh her a little, but in 15 seconds, it would be dead, and she’d be very proud of having caught her dinner.
Forget it, Jake, it’s Portland.
Increased aggression seems to be a common reaction when predators decide that humans are (a) nothing to fear and (b) a source of food or competition for food. Those of you living in bear country might like to comment.
This is also one reason why I consider a commonly-held view of the original canine domestication, to be so-much Disney-fantasy. That fairy-story being that wolves (of some kind) got so accustomed to scavenging from human kills that they decided to play nice, cooperate and move in with us. My counter is that if this dynamic “worked” we would still see it happening.
In reality, semi-wild animals are still a serious threat to vulnerable members of the family, and any stores of food. Hell…. a poorly trained domestic dog poses that kind of risk!
Far more obvious to my thinking, are those people groups that eat dogs. In a warm climate, a live young animal is self-storing food. Australian aboriginals have a recorded practice of taking wild pups back to camp for this reason. If food is plentiful and the young dingo sufficiently docile, it can adjust to being part of the human “pack” and live long enough to start hunting with the humans….
Not exactly the Disney version, but it has the advantage of being historical rather than fantastical.
I’ve never heard that “commonly-held view”. Wolves are terrified of humans. In areas where the peasants are disarmed, they might change their view when they’re starving, but dogs clearly date back to the days when no man left camp without a spear or sharpened rock to ensure he remained at the top of the food chain. I never figured the domestication of dogs began any way but men killed a momma wolf and brought some very small puppies home.
People who live close to nature are still occasionally bringing an orphaned wolf pup home and raising a tamed wolf, which comes to think of the humans raising it as its pack, and its superiors in the pack. I think that’s a bad idea – not because the tame wolf is dangerous to its human pack, but because every other human will look like a danger to the family, a competitor, or prey.
When I was growing up, Raccoons, Possums, Rats, and other small vermin were Open Season year round. One of my cousins even bagged a 4-foot long gator in the backwaters/side channels of the DuPage River where friends had vacation cabins. Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.
Went “rat hunting” at the city dump with a buddy one Spring night. We drove in with the lights off, and thought the road felt extra “bumpy”. He flipped on the lights and GOOD GRAVY, all we could see was a sea of fur under and around us, and about 10 million little glowing eyes staring back at us!
Didn’t know a CJ-5 could do a “Rockford Turn” so well…..
Okay, now THAT is nightmare fuel.
I’m now an actual resident of Portland and would caution you about which media you consume.
It’s not the wild, wild West out here. We have running water, electricity from the regional grid, and other signs of civilization. I tend to not leave anything of value in my car and did encounter a couple of people experiencing a dose (not an overdose) on my bicycle rde this afternoon but the idea that cocaine is a common street drug out here is totally out of touch with reality.
All- Interesting comments, thanks!
Raccoons are extremely intelligent. Once they learn a habit, or find a food source dissuading them is nearly impossible. And they will tear a dog to pieces if it’s one on one. The only solution to a group of them causing problems is extermination. Sadly in many places that’s nearly impossible from a legal perspective and the people tasked with such problems couldn’t care less about solving the problems.
If I lived in or near Portland I would figure out what food the trash pandas like the most , and toss lots of it out around the homeless camps let the parasites fight it out.
Those trash pandas do seem to like getting trashed:
“According to The Telegraph, raccoons have caused up to $15,000 in damages to some properties, raided kitchens and pantries, killed pets like rabbits and fish, and are drinking beer wherever they can source it.”
[…]
Raccoons were introduced to Germany in the 1930s and their population has increased by up to 17 per cent annually. It’s now estimated that about a million of the masked marauders call Deutschland home.
While initially limited to the countryside, raccoons have increasingly moved into cities like Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, as they’ve “discovered better food and nicer accommodation,” Ulf Hohmann, a raccoon expert and biologist at Göttingen University, told German publication DW.com.
Germany’s raccoon population is believed to have surged during the Second World War, after a bomb reportedly hit a raccoon farm east of Berlin and the escaped raccoons began breeding in the wild. Now listed as an Invasive Alien Species by the European Union, raccoons are not allowed to be imported, kept, transported, bred or released.
https://nationalpost.com/news/drunk-raccoons-germany
A civilized woman would have had a gun on her person and would have killed the racoon.
This is Portland, civilized is not found there.