Everybody was rac - coon fi-i-ghti-i-i-ing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Scene: Wednesday morning, about 7am.

Me: in bed.

.

.

Outside, apparently from the back yard: “SKREEEEEEYAAARRR! NGAAAAARRREEEYAAA!”

I wake up halfway. The hell is that? I think. The cat is at the foot of the bed, sprawled on his side, head up, also evidently having just been awakened.

“KHYIIIIIEERRR!”

I think: Stupid neighbor cats, and put my head back on the pillow.

Ten minutes later, right above my head:

*patter thump patter thump patter thump

“SKYAARRREEEEIIIIIIIIIII!”

THUMP THUMP THUMP*

The cat is now standing on the bed. His tail is frizzed out.

Well, at least it’s not you, I think, and get out of bed.

T-shirt, shorts, and birkenstocks later, I’m in the front yard, peering around the corner of the house. And what do I see, on the edge of the neighbor’s roof, which is just a couple of feet from mine: two rather large raccoons, engaged in piercingly loud mortal combat. The larger is on the roof; the smaller is hanging partway off, trying to get his (?) footing while the larger one bites the shit out of his face and neck.

“CHEEEEEEEGYAAAAANGRRRR!”

“Shut the fuck up,” I say. I don’t yell, because, y’know, it would be rude to wake up the neighbor.

I find a pine cone and lob it at the scuffling critters. No result. Might as well have flipped them off. So I do that too.

Then I go back around the house into the back yard, looking for a better tool, something big I can use to poke at the combatants. I’m grumpy, having just woken up, and I don’t stop to consider the wisdom of this activity; it doesn’t occur to me until later that my interference might win me the launch of an aggrieved and discernably pointy urban mammal at my soft and delicate face. Right now, I just want them to shut the fuck up and go away.

I inspect two different shovels, of the snow and garden variety, as well as the rake. And then I see the perfect implement: the currently-closed shade umbrella from the patio table.

Armed with this poofy lance, I pick my way down the side of the house toward the site of the battle. “Fuckers,” I say, as my slippers get wet.

“IIIIIIEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEIIIIIIII” say the increasingly desperate fighters.

I take my position and start to bring my weapon to bear. And then I hear the neighbor, who has apparently come outside and is in the front of her house where I can’t see her: “Knock it off!”

I don’t know if she’s talking to me, but I’m past caring. I’ve been rudely awakened, I’ve gone to all this effort, and I’m gonna poke me a raccoon.

I lift the patio umbrella, and it occurs to me, vaguely, that the neighbor lady can now see it. I waggle it at the raccoons. Waggle waggle.

“AAAAAAYYYAAAEEEIIII gnash bite claw EEEEEWWAAIIII”

I can’t see the larger animal, but the smaller one is managing to get back onto the roof. I give him a poke. Poke poke.

He (?) looks at me. The fur around his face is matted; I don’t know if he’s just a straggly, unattractive example of raccoonhood, or if he’s drenched with gore. Maybe he’s both.

I bang the edge of the roof with the umbrella.

From the roof, there is scuttering and scrabbling as the other raccoon flees. The smaller one hauls himself up and disappears a different direction.

Blissful silence.

I step forward, around the corner of the wall, to say hello to my neighbor. She’s in her fifties, with an aqua housedress and wild hair. I’m in my thirties, in t-shirt and shorts, with shorter but equally wild hair. Also, I’m holding a patio umbrella.

“Good morning,” I say.

She looks at the umbrella, and decides it will be safe to make conversation. “Yeah, I, uh, woke up, and I said, what was that, and, yeah.”

“Stupid raccoons,” I say.

“Uh-huh,” she says.

We look at each other.

And then both raccoons, armed with surprisingly large scimitars, fling themselves off the roof with deafening battle shrieks and proceed to carve me and the neighbor lady into bacon, which they fry up on the transformer at the top of the pole across the street.

Actually, I just turned around and went back into the house, where I spent a couple of minutes stroking the cat and de-frizzing his tail.

So how was your day?

2

Er, feet. :confused:

3

Hee hee! Great story. I loved the ads relating to patio umbrellas such that every homeowner can equip themselves to defend against the randy beasts.

4

CERVAISE, your racoons sound big; here in GB we think a fox is quite big (as big as a Cocker spanial) , is it scary !!!

5

This was the fuzzy black land shark, yes?

Damn raccoons. At my parents’ house they get squirrels and crows playing chase on the roof. Both of those creatures’ footsteps sound like those of MUCH bigger animals at 3:30am.

Ah, well, at least you don’t get awakened by your neighbors having noisy sex at 2:30am.

6

Raccoons can give a nasty bite, but they’re usually too afraid of people to act as these two did.

Where are you, that a fox ix the largest thing you have? Japan? The UK?

7

I’ve heard a racoon fight before-- unbelievable.

8

I’m pretty sure GB stands for Great Britian.

We have raccoons here that will come up to our sliding glass patio doors and scratch on them. I think the neighbors feed them.

9

I had a possum in my back yard a few years ago that refused to leave. Our dog would not go out while the possum wandered about looking for something. I have a large fishing net and caught the possum in it. I dumped the possum in a spare garbage can and went to get my truck keys to give him a ride away from my house. When I came out he was hissing and snarling at me so I decided to do the same to him that I do with the cats and laundry baskets. It’s time to go on an amusement ride. I swung the can a dozen or so time clockwise then did the same counter clockwise. I think it made me dizzier than the possum. I then set the can in an old office chair and spun the possum for a few minutes. That quieted him right down. He had the glassed over look in his eyes and fell over every time he stood up. I dumped him in a wooded area a few miles away. Instead of strolling off like other possums I’ve dumped in the woods, this ran from me as fast as possible.

10

I was woken by a bunch of raccoons rassling in my yard a couple night ago. I spotlighted them with the flashlight I keep next to my bed and threw an empty pop can which struck one of them on the back. Plucky little bastards just sniffed the can and went back to rassling.

I noticed how fat they were. I wondered how they got that fat. Probably eating garbage. And people’s pets. Then a small voice in the back of my head said “Maybe they’re eating the neighborhood rats!”

I decided that if I could ever prove to myself that they indeed are, I would build them a little racoon house in my backyard, with a sofa and a tv and a welcome mat. I might even build a little raccoon condo next to it, with a street and little racoon cars, maybe a pub for them to hang out in after work. I’m no fan of raccoons, really, but if I have to choose my neighborhood pest, I’ll take a garbage eating, cat terrorizing, harley riding raccons from hell any day of the week, as long as they rid the neighborhood of those filthy, disgusting, plague carrying, lice infested demon rats.

I don’t like rats.

11

My raccoon story.

Mid-80s. My older sister’s place north-side suburbs of Chicago. Just off the Edens.

I’m maybe 17 or 18. My sister’s a SAHM and has one baby.

I look outside. There’s a raccoon in her driveway. It’s stumbling into things and acting strange. I tell my sister. She looks. Then says “I think its got rabies or something. I’m calling the cops.”

Calls. We lose sight of the raccoon around the side of the house.

Cop drives up. “What’s the problem, ma’am?” She tells him. He chuckles…clearly thinking she’s a nervous housewife with no experience with wildlife. He and I go around the house to look for it. He’s in the lead.

We turn the corner to the back yard. The raccoon is RIGHT THERE! REARED UP ON ITS HIND LEGS AND LOOKING LIKE A BEAR! AHHH!!! It begins to charge us.

The next sound I hear is pistol shots. That cop drew a fast as Matt Dillon. Holy Shit!

My sister later told me it was sick with something. I don’t know to this day whether it was rabies or what. But that was one crazy agressive raccoon.

12

You think they’re noisy when they fight?

Wait’ll you hear them mate!!!

13

nothing quite so vicious in my neighborhood, but easily as noisy
street-cat-slut goes into heat every spring
(my smokey is fixed and housebound)
street-toms come a-running by the 3’s - and they always decide to have their orgy under my bedroom window
it doesn’t phase smokey at all - but comes the landscaper and ow! she up, running this way and that, across my chest with her sharp little claws

and slightly off topic but - how is it that my little 7 and a half pound furball has 20 PSI per paw when she stands on my chest???

14

Gophers can carry the Bubonic Plague, too. Just FYI.

Special cat physics. It also explains how they always know exactly the most painful spot to stand, too. I sometimes get tiny little bruises on my legs from the cats standing in one spot too long, and I don’t bruise easily.

15

And take up a full third of a queen sized bed, and when using the litter pan can leave a stanch that could knock a buzzard of a shit wagon :frowning:

Ever notice that when the cutle little kitty runs she can shake dishes off the shelves?

16

My mother-in-law had a problem raccoon. A female managed to squeeze through a loose soffit and nest in her attic. My mother-in-law heard scraping, squeaking and squealing above her bedroom ceiling for a couple days. She knew something was up there, but didn’t know what.

She had my brother-in-law come over to look in the attic. He saw mom raccoon and several babies. Mom knew that eventually she’d have to get rid of the boarders upstairs, but bless her heart, she started putting water and food up in the attic. She just couldn’t stand to see an animal suffer.

Big mistake.

Once the mother raccoon had an adequate food supply, she apparently went into heat. It’s either that, or multiple daddy raccoons wanted to take the babies fishing or something. Screaming and howling, they tried for several nights to get into the attic, but couldn’t find a way. The mother raccoon kept up a constant barrage of warning snarls. Needless to say, this was very disturbing to my mother-in-law. Food supplies stopped, immediately.

Big mistake.

Mom raccoon figured out where the food was coming from, and opening the trap door into the attic, raided the kitchen while mom was out. Worse yet, that night the male raccoons tore a hole through the roof, which allowed them to see, but not quite get to the mom raccoon. She proceeded to defend her babies, and such a battle occurred that my mother-in-law left the house.

Next day, she got a wildlife wrangler to remove the family, ostensibly to a preserve, but I’m not sure my mother-in-law cared by then. The damage to the roof, ceiling, insulation, soffit, and whatever was mid-four-figures. Insurance covered most of it, but her rates went up.

17

Page 37 of the Boy Scout manual agrees that when approaching a raccoon, it’s usually safest to go Mary Poppins on their sorry asses.

Cervaise, this and other recantations suggest you undeniably have a really cool cat. Tail poofage is… happenin’.

18

one day last autumn I was sitting happily at the 'puter, playing a game or some such, and a flash of grey fur comes scampering in and jumps up on the desk. At first I tought it was Smokey, but suddenly (in what seems to take a really long time) I realized it was a squirrel!!!
Apparently it had gotten in thru the broken top of the unused chimney (a nasty tree, on a dare by a wild wind storm, knocked a few bricks off the top) (and the burner chimney is on the other side of the house) and was running rampant thru the house. Smokey was chasing it, a little, but not really interested in catching it. So I chased it. In and out of closets. back and forth in the hall. and finally downstairs to the fireplace where I can only assume it finally scampered its way back up the chimney and outside (as there was never any further evidence of its presence).
Then there was the crow. about a year and a half ago, I came home from work and heard a noise in the bedroom. It sounded like kitty-play (she always finds something on my nightstand to attack) When I turned on the light, there was a large black bird sitting on top of the TV (which is on top of the armoire so you can visualize it) Now, I’d only ever seen photos or cartoons of crows, so I wasn’t sure what it was, or how it got in for that matter (the chimney hadn’t gotten into its argument with the tree yet) but there it was, looking around, deciding whether or not it liked my drapes. And Smokey was sitting in the hall, cleaning herself, not caring a fig about the feathered invader. So I opened a window, went across the hall and opened a window in that room, grabbed a broom, and started coaxing the bird towards the outside (one side of the house or the other, I wasn’t picky). 20 minutes later, it finally flew out the front room window. I closed the windows and sat down. Smokey came over to me and looked up quizzically as if to say “what was all that ruckus? I would have done something about it eventually”

19

We used to live in an apartment building near a creek. Our apartment was eight floors above the dumpster, which as you can imagine attracted raccoons, who number approximately 15,000,000 animals in the city of Mississauga.

Every. Single. Night. The raccoons would be screaming and growing, humping and fighting, from 2 AM to 5 AM. The cats would go berserk and the 'coons would wake us up.

We moved.

Incidentally, in terms of raccoon control; if you have a raccoon transplanted, you have almost certainly killed it. Raccoons are territorial, and it’s quite unlikely you will be transplanting the raccoon anywhere there aren’t already raccoons; the animal will likely be driven out of the area. They also don’t do well in finding food in places they’re unfamiliar. It’s usually more merciful to just kill it in the first place.

20

actually, tail poofage, altho cute, is a sign that something is very wrong in the cat’s territory; an invader, 4-legged or 2; an unusual and possibly toxic smell, a very sudden, very loud noise.
Next time you see your cat’s tail poofy, cautiously investigate your house. It could be nothing more than something going on outside that is of no threat to you but it could be more