Staff Blog
Night of the Animals: Part One
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The following events are true and accurate to the best of my recollection — which, admittedly, gets hazier somewhere in Part Two.
Part One
'Twas just the other night. I was outside, on the back deck of my current abode in West Philly, watching something descend the tree in our back yard.
Was it a cat? A possum? No.
It was a raccoon, and it was coming right at me. I grabbed a rake and waggled it at the thing. The raccoon was huge — it seemed to be the size of a small bear cub — and totally undeterred by my rake. It stared at me for a few seconds, and resumed the approach.
I’ve seen plenty of raccoons, but ever since a particularly evocative episode of This American Life, in which a woman recounts a near-death experience at the hands of a rabid raccoon, I’ve thought twice about how close I want to get to one.
I chucked an empty plastic flower pot at the raccoon. The animal picked it up — you know that raccoons have opposable thumbs? — tossed it aside, and crept even closer. I chucked a ceramic dish at it this time. The dish broke.
I retreated inside.
But that wasn't the end of it. An hour later, I was sitting on the back deck of a friend’s house, recounting the story, when my friend noticed movement in a nearby tree. Sure enough, two raccoons descended into her back yard.
It seemed like a lot of raccoons for one night.
And then things got stranger still: an hour after that, back at home, I got a call from the same friend: “There’s a raccoon, trapped in a cage, across the street," she said, "and he's making noises like he's being tickled."
I recalled a movie I saw years ago, Day of the Animals. The premise was that the animals had finally turned on humans, and we were all more or less fucked.
If this was the beginning of the end, I figured, it should be documented. Ten minutes later, I was on my bike and headed for the trapped raccoon.
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[...] Deadline, Shmeadline: First Person Arts’ “Salon du Festival” applications due Friday, Aug. 21• Night of the Animals: Part One• JA Happ Just (More or Less) Won the 2009 Rookie of the Year Award• Call for [...]
Lol
Just fFYI… we live in Pennsylvania, in which raccoons are natural inhabitants. Even in the city! For real, raccoons are like pigeons and they are like “What’s up a-holes? I used to scavenge in the woods but you moved into my hood, I will now scavenge your trash!!!! Suck it!”
The last documented case in Pennsylvania of a human contracting a fatal case of rabies was in 1984 (25 years ago, son! source)
What this is all getting at is the fact that if you call up animal control and have them pick up a raccoon in a trap it will be immediately killed. In the state of PA raccoons (along with adorable little groundhogs, foxes and cutey faced brown bats) are considered a “rabies vector species”. Despite the fact that we have not had a fatal case of rabies in the last 25 years, PA game commission still dictates that any species through which the rabies virus may transfer from wildlife to humans is immediately destroyed. This means that any animal of the aforementioned species that falls into the hands of Philly animal control will be killed. Baby, juvenile, nursing mom or not, they’re all killed.
So please, PLEASE think twice about having animal control come pick up the wildlife that is living in your hood, perfectly adapted and happy, just like the squirrels and the finches, because it WILL be killed, as dictated by state law. Another thing to think about is that sure, if you have a nuisance raccoon or ground hog, it might make sense to want to get it out of your face. However, removing that animal does not remove the food source it was attracted to in the first place, so by removing the animal you may well create a vacuum into which a way more annoying wild animal will move into to exploit the food source. JUST SAYING! think about it.