a love the smell of skunk in the morning

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

There is no breed of cat smaller than a leopard that is capable of dealing with a raccoon…at least without placing very long odds on the cat. Those who think that raccoons are small, cute, furry animals as featured by Walt Disney and Sterling North (the author, not the poster) are deluding themselves, aided by WD and SN. In suburbia, a signficant portion of the raccoon’s diet is domestic cat. A large boar raccoon can be up to 50 pounds (about 23 kg.) in weight. They’ve been known to kill coonhounds.

Opossums are different; they’re smaller, stupider, and less selective in their diets than raccoons (when you’re as dumb as a 'possum, you have to be willing to eat anything that can’t get away from you). Opossums can be scared off, temporarily (although they’re so dumb that, within a day, they’ll forget that they’ve been scared and come back).

Skunks are also stupid, although not as stupid as opossums (anything stupider than an opossum has to be put in a pot and watered). They also smell bad; opossums survive as a species by being incredibly prolific. A word of advice, wring: do not leave catfood, or even remotely edible garbage, on the porch, as both the skunks and the opossums will come and eat it (the alternative is to search for beetle grubs and rotting fruit; under the circumstances I’d probably eat the catfood).

I won’t mention deer (a/k/a “rats with hooves”) and coyotes, as I need to conserve horrors for the next post :smiley:

22

:eek:
You are all out of your friggin’ minds.

23

Skunk, at a distance mind you, has an almost citrusy smell to me. I like it in much the same way I like the smell of barns ( if the ammonia reek isn’t too powerful ) :slight_smile: .

Akatsukami: We aren’t exaggerating a little for effect, are we :wink: ? Raccoons don’t eat a lot of domestic cats. A few, maybe - But raccoons aren’t built for speed ( though they’re quick ) and a cat can evade one with a reasonable degree of success. Naw, raccoons are omnivores, just like opossums and will eat damn near anything ( including dogfood in my kitchen after wandering through the doggie door :smiley: ). By and large they aren’t real predatory on other mammals in the way that, say, a coyote would be ( now they take cats - not to mention small dogs ).

I once knew a fellow that owned a Margay ( long story ), that unbeknownst to him used to get out at night and feast on the local felines ( even longer story - this was actually witnessed once - it was apparently very easy, as the local domestic cats were very curious about the “big, foreign cat” that suddenly appeared in the neighborhood :stuck_out_tongue: ).

A brief story:
I used to live in San Francisco, near the corner of 45th and Lincoln. If you know the city, it’s in the Sunset district, across the street fron GG Park and a few blocks from the beach. Lots of wildlife. I had an in-law apartment, that was sub-groundlevel. The back door opened up just a little below the patio. There was only one window ( looking out at the patio ), the sill of which was level with the patio, itself. Being that sort of person, I slept with my head at one corner of the open window.

Now - I had two cats. One of them a stray that had just “moved in”. They were indoor/outdoor cats ( yes, not the greatest thing for them or the local bird population, I know ). The paraded through the open window all the time, often striding over me in the process. That was okay, I was used to it.

One fine morning/night, about one a.m. , I’m snoozing when something steps on my face and wakes me up. Damn cats, I think. Then I notice that it smells muddy and felt weird. About the ight weight though, so I’m thinking it’s a cat that got into something nasty. “Huh?” I blurt, sleepily. It removes itself from my face. I lean up, flick on the light, and glance out the open window.

Perched on the windowsill was my face-walker - A baby raccoon! Behind it, three more babies. Behind them, a very large, very irate mother who hissed at me quite nastily. :eek:

We all agreed to back away warily :stuck_out_tongue: .

  • Tamerlane
24

Raccoons broke into (well, you know, gained entry through the attic) my husband’s childhood home and they snacked on his gerbils. Found them quite tasty.

Yes, raccoons are mean and clever and very tough. My husband once tried to kill one that was trapped in their garage. He didn’t use a gun. It’s a long, ugly, horrible story and I nearly bawl when he tells it to me (he was young and foolish, not the animal lover I’ve always been). Anyway, the raccoon nearly got the better of him. I won’t go into details.

Don’t possums emit a rotting-meat smell when scared? I thought that was their trick–to not just play dead, but to smell dead too.

25

I used to think that racoons were cute & cuddly & stuff. They’re not. Really, they’re not.

My first husband and I had spent the evening at home, watching a Stephen King movie on TV–It. At about 3 or 4 in the morning (may have been a little later, but it certainly was the wee hours), I hear this vicious barking and growling noise. And it sounds like it’s in my kitchen. I was petrified. After having watched It, I’m thinking, “S**!!!* Pennywise is in my kitchen!!!”

My husband woke up too. Now, he was a hunter. He shot little furry varmints like raccoons. But even he was a bit freaked. He got his shotgun, and commenced to checking. Nothing in the apartment (we lived in an apartment that was built inside of a barn, on 10 acres of land–we’d had varmint visitors before). After some investigating, he discovered that it was two raccoons fighting, inside the barn, on the roof of the apartment. He didn’t shoot them, though. They were too busy tearing each other up, and he figured if he just waited a bit, he’d only have to shoot one. Which he did, later.

The noise they made, though, was just unreal. Screeching, barking, howling like Lucifer’s Own Raccoons. Dear Goddess! Gives me the extreme willies just thinking about it, and this event was more than ten years ago. shudder

26

Me, exaggerate? I told people at least a million times that I don’t exaggerate :stuck_out_tongue:

Actually, raccoons don’t feed much on cats. They will kill them, though, seeing them as competition. A cat in good condition is quicker than a raccoon – but it’s quicker than a coyote, too (although coyotes can be cursorial hunters when they want to be).

27

I’m amazed at how big those Raccoons are, they seem so nice and cuddly from the sound of it they have to be as heavy as, say, a border collie.

The biggest thing we have are Badgers which can be pretty nasty if you give them no room to run away and they only get to around 12Kg so a 20Kg rodent sounds pretty mean.

I wonder if they have been semi-domesticated, if they are territorial they’d make great guard thingies from the sound of it.

28

A few days ago I found a possum in the kitchen eating the cat food. My little brother picked it up with a box and took it outside. It played dead the whole time.

29

Another great band name just waiting to be emblazoned across a bass drum.

30

I was just doing a little research on bat guano and airborne pathogens and I ran across this tidbit from this website:

It reminded me of this story, so I thought I’d pass it along.

31

World’s Heaviest Raccoon sits in at 64.9lb on this website. This website gives weight for males at 8-27lb and females at 6-20lb.

Regarding their temperament/domestication: I can only speak from personal experience, but we raised a few when I was growing up–MamaCoon would be found at the side of the road with a fatal case of impactus automobilis, and the young’uns would be too young to care for themselves. We’d take them home and keep them in a large cage until they were over being afraid of us, and then just let them run loose with the other pets (farm, don’cha know). Males tend to get aggresive fairly early, and once puberty hits, we usually had to take them out to the woods and let them go.

The female we had when I was in middle/high school, however, was always docile and as gentle as can be. I used to camp out in the back yard and she would burrow into the sleeping bag to sleep under my chin. Raccoons, in addition to all the other strange noises they make, will purr just like a cat when they’re particularly comfortable. She stayed around the house for a few years, even raising a few litters in a tree in the back yard (the kits never got tame, but she would routinely bring them up to eat with the dogs and cats).

They can do some serious damage if riled, though. I’ve heard (but not seen) that if a 'coon gets ANY dog in the water, the dog is a goner. The 'coon will climb up on its head and drown it. Not to mention rip it to pieces.

32

I’m always amused whenever I see a coyote chasing a cat, and the cat’s always so frightened it never thinks of running up a tree…

Now, if only the raccoons would take care of more rats…

33

Yeah, it’s incredible the noises they make. We had a pair in our backyard several times this last summer, cleaning out the seed in the bird feeders. I looked it all up in my raccoon:english dictionary, and if I translated it right, they were arguing about who got to go first, I think. Coon #1 said that #2’s mask was on crooked. #2 retorted that coon #1’s mother never washed her food. I couldn’t keep up with them after that…

34

Thank you for yet another addition to my “Why I don’t deal with bats” tome, Volume IIV.

:wink:

35

You’re quite welcome … always happy to help. Except when it comes to getting rid of bats in your home :stuck_out_tongue:

36

Try dealing with a, injured, torqued-off AND skunked Great Horned Owl.

GHOs are one of the few animals that will tangle with a skunk, since they (GHOs and most other birds) do not have a very good sense of smell. Well, Reader’s Digest edition - this one tangled with one, got sprayed and ended up with a broken wing, to boot.

(former)Roommate and I are now dealing with a very tall (2’ tall), very smelly, non-flying, torqued-off raptor that can rip the flesh off off your arm in an instant (large talons - they’re not called ‘Flying Tigers’ for nothing!). Somehow, we get this thing loaded in the carrier (after lots of glaring, dodging and snapping) and get it into the car.

Problem. We need to keep the car warm so the bird will not go into shock, and this is a cold snap in Florida. Windows up, heater on, gag meter rising. 30 miles later, we end up at the rehab center. Now it’s their turn to deal with ‘stinky’.

End result:

  • Small break in the wing, released a couple of weeks later.

  • The guys at the car wash give me really funny looks every time I return with the ‘rescue car’.