After the purchase of our house was finalized, the former owners regaled us with the charming story of the raccoon that died in their chimney. They discovered it when they were having a dinner party, opened the damper to light a fire, and the maggots started dropping onto the hearth.
Toronto is sacred raccoon grounds.
But in keeping with the topic, if you want to be creeped out google “raccoon roundworm”. Something to think about while cleaning up the droppings in the backyard.
We also had a beautiful koi pond! For years the raccoons just ignored it! We had snails that were 8 years old and winterover in the silt! A beautiful flowering lily and 3 lovely gold fish!
Then the raccoons found it. They tore up the lily and ate the bulb! Smashed all the snails and ate all the fish.
We tried to rebuild, and tried various cages of chicken wire to keep them out. But it never worked. They have long memories the little buggers, raccoons will always come back.
@gadgetgirl - I think I’m your friend! Our old house didn’t have AC but it did have North and South facing windows and patio doors that I would leave wide open in the evening to catch the evening breeze.
This is the result:
That cupboard is where we kept the catfood see, and when these SIX siblings were babies they could ALL fit in the cupboard together. Here they are teenagers, totally unafraid of me, and very very well fed. Only the best kibble for these guys! LOL - I literally would have to get a broom and physically sweep them out of the cupboard and out of the house. Cute clever little buggers.
Just to get back to the topic, these fuckers creeped the shit out of me several times because they were the same size and colour of our cat. And more than once I reached down to pet what I thought was the cat and no, it was a fat raccoon.
Rats are what we worry about in my area of the world. And wolves have been spotted in some of the suburbs nearby. I see a fat possum going up my driveway, once in a while, when I’ve driven home at night. And skunks are about once in a while. But the only mammal that’s been in the house that I know of, and I’m not going to speculate on others, has been of the feline variety. Oh, and we had pet mice, once.
Last year, I had a crazy amount of spring weeding to do in the yard, so one evening I found myself at the edge of the yard digging up dandelions by the roots at dusk. There was a somewhat distracting scratching noise, but I waited to look to see what caused it for a minute as I was digging. When I looked up, there was a big raccoon sitting about a foot in front of me, digging into the soil with its fingers just like I was! Apparently, it thought that I was digging because I had found a tasty meal of some kind, and it wanted in. But when I offered it the dandelions, it wasn’t interested. So I finished my weeding and left it to scavenge.
I wasn’t so much creeped out by the raccoon itself, as having read that rabies is endemic to their population around here.
You know what creeps me out? Hearing people moving around hotel hallways in the middle of the night. For some reason it never bothers me in cities, but in hotels it does (probably because I’m already less comfortable).
That’s absolutely horrific – and has probably happened more than once in my neighbourhood.
OMG that’s awful. And yeah, they are totally fearless. It’s like they know about the law.
I used to help a friend out with his arcade; we’d go around and buy old arcade cabinets at auctions and people’s basements. We once hauled a Dragon’s Lair out of a barn. We were so jazzed to get an awesome-condition cabinet for a few hundred dollars that we didn’t open it up until getting it back; a family of raccoons had been living inside. A cascade of raccoon poop poured out along with what used to be an animal of some type.
We have an indoor cat who likes to slip outside. One night, the cat escaped, so my daughter’s boyfriend went out in the dark to bring her back in. He saw a furry shadow on top of our garbage can and made a grab for it. The very irritated raccoon hissed back.
Reminds me, a very long time ago in my first apt. It was a little second story unit of a house. I left the kitchen window open since it was a hot summer evening. In the middle of the night I heard a noise in the kitchen and went to investigate without bothering to put on clothes or turn on the lights. The doorway had some old hippie bead curtains. As I was moving through the beads into the kitchen, there came a low feral angry guttural sound from between my legs. In the dark I couldn’t see what was below me. All I knew was it was alive and angry I had disturbed it and my delicate bits were in the bite zone…
As my girlfriend at the time would later say in the many re-tellings. First she heard the tomcat make his late night yodel sounds and then there came forth from the dark such a wale, such a cry of fear and confusion, that surely this was the sound one made when they suddenly unexpected had been disemboweled.
For the record I do not recall making this sound but have a feeling the events may have occurred roughly as retold.
This was going to go off-topic, but for those creeped out by raccoons, they’ve now infiltrated Pearson Airport (Toronto’s major airport):
Um, that’s us - the one true vermin.
Verminism is relative.
Relative to Gaia.
I am much less patient of raccoons than all of you.
Vermin is as vermin does.
I’ve had a lot of raccoon experiences, both good and bad.
One of the other creepiest incidents, but in a different sort of way altogether, was a bizarre morning when I walked out of my apartment at the exact moment that a truck drove by and chucked a cardboard box out of the passenger window. It landed right next to me and a young raccoon crawled out, looking dazed. It started stumbling around drunkenly and flakes of foamy spittle came from its mouth when it coughed. It started coming towards me, making rattling breathing noises. I put a plastic crate over it with a weight on top and called animal control. My guess is that someone got a cute baby raccoon for a pet but didn’t want to keep an angry, horny, rabid (?) adolescent one around.
I am Groot!
I saw the play “Dark of the Moon” last night and the climax when the church forced Barbara to have sex with someone she didn’t love had me shaking from memories of far less extreme spiritual abuse, especially because in a sense the church was trying to “cure” her of her attractions.
