The Case of the Vicious Raccoons

I have a live-and-let-live attitude toward wildlife. I might change my mind if, say, a mountain lion carried off Mr. Bobo. Any beast who decided to make a Scooby Snack of my kitty cat had better find a good hiding place. I’ll form a posse and we’ll hunt him down with flaming torches and a big old shotgun. (Just kidding-flaming torches would be a fire hazard.)

But I would never dream of harming a cute little woodland creature such as a raccoon. In fact, in the pantheon of animals that have been Disneyfied, the raccoon is my favorite. Maybe it’s the little mask, or the dexterous paws or the clever way they have learned to survive on garbage.

I like to collect raccoon stories. At the top of my list of favorites is the one where raccoons invade a cabin in the woods while the inhabitants are out hiking. Chaos ensues.

During our weekly phone call, my mother added to my collection of raccoon tales. They had had an encounter just the day before. Their yard is a deeply sloping wooded lot with enormous trees whose branches intersect and form a net for acrobatic squirrels. They regularly are visited by the woodchucks, moles, and snakes that are common to their part of the Midwest. Raccoons are quite comfortable walking across the patio in full view of the humans and Molly the Cockapoo.

So when my mother spotted two raccoons huddled behind a drainpipe, she was worried. Were they injured? Were they sick? Or worse, were they plotting? Mom didn’t like the looks of it. She consulted with Molly, who barked out a plan to roust them from their hiding place and make short work of them. Instead, they decided to send out their go-to guy-Dan, my brother-in-law.

Dan approached the raccoons carefully, hoping to discern their intentions. They hissed at him.

“Watch out!” yelled my mother from inside the house. “They might be rabid!”

Dan came back in the house and they continued the raccoon surveillance. On the other side of the glass, the raccoons continued casing the joint. After a two-hour standoff, the humans called the town police to report a 3462, Raccoons Behaving Strangely.

Within the hour, an officer came out, armed with handcuffs and a cell phone. After more than two hours of whispered cell phone conversations, backup arrived. The second officer had a long pole with a hook on the end of it. The officers knocked on the door and said, “Do you have anything we can put them in?”

Mom produced a suitable container. The officers snagged one of the varmints and put it in the box. Then they used a broom to trap the other one and threw him in the box as well.

“What are you going to do with them?” asked Mom.

“We’ll take them out to the country,” said one. “We’ll return your box later tonight.”

Return it they did, only 20 minutes after they had left on their raccoon relocation mission.

Mom thanked the officers for their help. She turned to Dan, handing him the empty raccoon container. “Took them to the country, huh? The only ‘country’ you can find within a 10-minute drive is the Country Club. I’ll bet they just knocked ‘em in the head.”

I thought of asking for the police report, but I didn’t really want to know.