Recently in raccoons Category

Many of us pet owners who can't be home for long stretches at a time LOVE our doggie doors.

What a great invention.

The free-swinging plastic flaps allow our dogs and cats to come and go at will, traveling from our fenced yards and into the house without any help from us. When we're at work for long hours, they can be completely (well, almost) self-sufficient without us.

Of course, one of the biggest upsides to all this is no indoor accidents. No muss, no fuss. Ever. We like that part a lot.

The downside?

See above. And then read our cautionary tale below titled The Great Raccoon Visit.

One of our Daily Breeze editors sent me these photos that came from the senior pastor at his church. The pastor and his family were actually home when this intruder decided to come for an uninvited visit.

The peaceful parsonage was soon to be upended.

The pastor was the first one who noticed something amiss. He spotted a dark streak shoot by him. 

Whatever that was, it surely was not the family dog, he realized.

He followed to discover what appeared to be a gigantic, unfriendly, drooling and rather-unpleasant raccoon.

Gently commanding such a creature to "Shooo!" and "Go in peace"  would be ineffective, for sure.

So the pastor sprang into action and courageously gave chase.

And how did that work out? Predictably, mayhem ensued.

Fortifications were needed. The pastor's wife and daughter bravely joined in the fray, armed, respectively, with a shoe and a broom.

What followed sounded like it was quite the broom-swat-and-swishing, shoe-lobbing Keystone Cop-style chase all through the house, the renegade raccoon cleverly evading capture at each and every turn.

When the critter decided to jump down from one of his perches, a bookcase, he took more than a few things with him:

Animal control was called but the officer arrived after the creature had torn through the house again and finally exited on his own, presumably going back out the way he came -- through the doggie door.

It was one of the biggest raccoons the animal control officer said he'd seen after being shown the picture.

A good reminder, he added, to close those doggie doors up at night.

The damage: rattled nerves, a knocked over lamp and claw marks in their leather couch.

The good news from all this? The pastor had a lively sermon illustration for the week, the theological message of which was not relayed to me in the editor's second-hand, emailed account.

So readers: What's the strangest thing you've seen come through your doggie door? And how did you get it back out again?  

 

We got a call from a San Pedro resident named Cheryl today who told us she and her dog, Scooby, were attacked and bitten the other night by a raccoon as they walked along the ocean cliff wall in San Pedro's Point Fermin Park.

She said she often leash walks her dog -- a Chiahuahua-Jack Russell mix -- at the park in the

evenings. But on Saturday night, she said a raccoon bounded over the wall from the other (cliff) side, biting her dog and then her on the leg, running circles around them. The racoon then literally chased them across the park to their car.

Cheryl is now going through a series of shots in case the animal had rabies. Her dog had to be taken to the vet ER, but he also will be OK. She didn't report the incident to L.A. Animal Services, but that would probably be a good idea (though a report may have been filed after-the-fact through the required medical reporting procedures),

She feels the problem goes back to people feeding the racoons and/or the feral cats whose food is then shared and consumed by other wildlife.

Raccoon attacks are rare, but do happen. It's always good to stay on alert when you're out walking and to remember that wild animals can be unpredictable. And sometimes they can seemingly come at you from out of nowhere.

  

 

Here's a story about a real masked bandit.

Seems a courthouse in Atlanta had found evidence of an intruder -- a half-eaten apple, some footprints.

The break-in last week at the Richard B. Russell Federal Building was duly reported.

The intruder made no effort to cover his tracks across a stack of federal memos in the 14th-floor office. When the judge started calling his staff and others to exampine the scene, the evidence was conclusive: The perpetrator was a raccoon.

In the days to come, other signs turned up -- stolen chocolate chip cookies on the 10th floor, a missing sandwich on the ninth floor, a packet of dried soup snatched from the 23rd (!) floor.

A "wanted" poster went up along with a "raccoon crossing" sign on the judge's door, according to the Associated Press story posted on LA Unleashed.

The suspect was finally nabbed by using a tuna-baited trap above the ceiling tiles in federal bankruptcy Judge Paul W. Bonapfel's office.

The raccoon was named "Russell" by office workers -- in honor of the building's namesake.

"We're going to see if we can get him turned loose on a farm somewhere," said Robert Perkins, the building's manager. "We're going to take him a long way from this building."

It was a good life while it lasted.