The Cool House: Raccoon redux

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Raccoon redux

It looks like we have an outbreak of distemper in the local raccoon population. On Sunday our next door neighbors called to say they had a raccoon acting strangely in their yard and although he wandered off he was back yesterday and again today. It seems that as the disease is so contagious, we could have quite a few sick raccoons in the area until the colony is decimated. That's what happened about seven years ago.
Apparently humans can't catch distemper and our cats and dogs have been vaccinated (raccoons get both canine and feline distemper) so we should be fine. And now I'm more convinced that it isn't rabies I am not so worried about them, I just don't like to see the poor raccoons suffer. The neighbors, on the other hand, are still at the freaked out stage. They bought a humane trap and the police have been here again trying to capture the beast but this one is even more tricky than ours. So until he's caught the kids are staying inside and we are keeping all the doors shut.
There's only one thing worse than a sick raccoon in the yard and that's a sick raccoon in the house

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