My Thursday morning started out with a visit from this cute little guy (or gal). My son called me as he was leaving to tell me there was a cute raccoon sitting behind my car. I was very thankful for the heads up because if I had let miss Cinnamon (my Huskey) out to do her business she would have given chase. Such a chase would have resulted in face-planting me off the steps to the porch.
I went out to try to shoo it along being cautious because I knew it shouldn't be out during the day, so something had to be wrong with it. It very slowly walked by my car toward the side of the cabin. I proceeded to peak around the short fence that is in front of my car to see where it went and this is where I found it (see picture). It wouldn't budge from this spot and just stared at me as I tried to shoo it further. I knew at this point I needed to call someone to come take care of the problem.
After several phone calls, one being a trapper that deduced that this little guy probably had distemper, I had to call the local sheriffs department. Nobody else was able to come out to take care of this that day. The trapper told me to go out and make loud noises and suggested clacking pans together. So here I am clacking pans together in my pj's looking like a crazy woman. It just stared at me like I was a crazy woman in her pj's clacking pans together but never moved. I popped it with a BB hoping that would move it along and it took a full minute for it to react to that.
The officer arrived and found it behind my car again. She blew her air horn and it moved back to the side of the house. Her supervisor told her she would have to shoot it because it was sick but she needed to get it to a clearing first if possible so she didn't have anything for bullets to ricochet off of or risk hitting someone's home or car or worse yet another person.
Here begins the adventure. I had at least changed out of my pj's while waiting for the officer to arrive. We each grabbed a larger branch and began herding it to get it to the clearing. It started heading that direction then looped back under the travel trailer behind my property where it proceeded to go back and forth for what seemed like forever. It finally headed toward the clearing and looped back to the trailer again. Then it ran us through the wooded area to the side of my cabin where we lost it. I am covered in scrapes from thorned vines that we ran through and sporting a bruise on my thigh from dropping the end of the branch I was carrying too low and running into it.
I was concerned it would return and I had to go to work. I was worried that my husband would run across it and try to pet it because he wants a raccoon as a pet. I told him it was rabid and explained what the treatment for rabies was to deter this. My son later let it out of the bag that it wasn't rabid.
Thankfully, my visitor hasn't returned but I now go out before letting miss Cinnamon out and do a walk around to make sure there are no surprises.
Do you have any wildlife adventures to share? Drop it in the comments.
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