… he fell back in his room, only to find Gideon’s Bible.
I wondered when Rocky would make an appearance.
The police insist they will not for anything smaller than a deer.
However, neighbors are now planning on complaining to the police as well. Our local police are…leisurely. It’s Saturday night. Enough calls and they will probably remove it so they may resume their leisure, as little else will likely occur.
This time of year maggots will devour it in just a few days no more than a week.
Get real close, and poke it with a short, sharp stick.
Or perhaps it can be revived with CPR?
It’s all fun and games, until someone gets Rabies…
Seriously - Raccoons are a huge Rabies reservoir. I wouldn’t be getting Raccoon guts on me if I could help it.
If rabies was such a big issue why doesn’t a local health office have concern. Call the health dept.
When I lived in a semi-rural part of New York, animal control would trap the entire local population and inoculate them. I came across the operation once in the nature conservancy near my house - fifty raccoons all stacked up in cages waiting for their shots.
Rabies is transmitted primarily through bites. It would be extraordinarily unlikely for rabies to be transmitted from a dead animal that had already begun to putrify.
IDK, I still wouldn’t want a rabid dead racoon laying around my yard. Sanitation and such.
You have to admire the raccoon. What he’s doing takes guts.
We have a little problem with dead bats.* Animal control consistently tells us not to touch them but to use a shovel to get them into a bag. Animal Control, however, doesn’t want them–they have us double-bag and throw them in the trash.
*As best we can tell, they swoop into our covered cat porch to roost, whereupon they are dispatched. Startling kills for functionally indoor cats, but a powerful reminder of why indoor animals need rabies shots, too.
Funny you should mention it.
I had one swoop into my bedroom last night as I closed up the screened sliding glass door in that room. At least, that’s what I think happened. I didn’t notice his entrance – which is surprising, because he’s a big 'un.
I was startled out of sleep after only half an hour by the Dachshund worry-woofing. Not a fun way to wake up from a sound sleep to see a bat flitting around your head in an erratic and panicked way. The dog and I dove under the covers while I worked out our escape from the room.
Finally made a break for it – though I had to go back and brave another potential bat attack to retrieve some clothing.
Boned up on how to entice bats to leave the house.
The instructions said to open one window or door wide, the bat will sense the air flow and fly right out. Well, he didn’t and he hasn’t. I have a stupid bat. He flew everywhere but couldn’t seem to source the exit through the large, open sliding glass door. Now he’s tired and prefers hanging around (haha!) the recessed sky light. At least he’s confined to the bedroom.
I’ll give him another opportunity tonight. If he instead dies of thirst before making an escape, I’ll keep your good advice in mind about how to dispose of the carcass.
This happened once before, about 10 years ago. In that instance, I never knew the bat was in the house. It dove into a sink full of water for soaking dishes overnight and drowned. I accidentally picked it up, thinking it was a stray leaf of lettuce. Ugh.
Any updates on Rocky the Stanky Raccoon, LordHenry? Sorry for the thread hijack.
Poor bat. 
Yeah, I feel bad for him, too. I really hope he figures it out tonight. I don’t mind them at all so long as they aren’t in my house.
Last year around Thanksgiving I had to dispose of an opossum that died under our front porch. She had become so fat that she got stuck in the lattice that forms the siding underneath as she tried to squeeze through. She evidently died of hypothermia during the night. I was really glad to have found her after she had died rather than while she was still struggling. I was also glad that she hadn’t stiffened so much that I couldn’t pull her through the lattice.
I got some gloves and a shovel and buried her in the back yard. Fortunately she died during the night and it was still cool so she hadn’t begun to stink.
Aspenglow: If you woke up to find a bat flying around your bedroom, you may have been bitten. From what I understand, you can be bitten by a bat and never feel it. Which means, you should probably get rabies shots, pronto.
Firstly, you should try to capture it for post mortem examination of its brain. Might spare you the rabies shot(s). Tetanus shot would be a good idea.
If Colibri is still around, he can probably explain it better.
Well, that’s scary.