https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.9dde7daece26

"Coggeshall thought something was wrong with the raccoon, since it was out in broad daylight. What came next confirmed that. As Coggeshall left his garage to try to shoo the animal away, the raccoon stood up on its hind feet and flashed its sharp, white teeth and pink gums. Saliva dripped from its mouth. .. "

"“It was kind of startling,” Coggeshall told The Washington Post."

Well, yeah .. as in OVERLOAD YOUR BVD'S STARTLING, LOL

"ANOTHER" sequel??

Time to make my 10/22 earn its keep, I guess.

I had a coon in the yard last summer about 4 in the afternoon that stood up and snarled at me. I told it to wait a minute, went in the basement and grabbed my bow. When he reared up again I poked a nice big hole in his middle.

Several years ago I was deer hunting, just about too dark to see, a coon comes walking down a trail and acting strange, walking in circles, chasing its tail, making funny noises, watched it for a couple of minutes, thought about being on the ground in the dark with a possible rabid coon, at 15 yards a 150gr bullet from a 270 really makes a mess of a coon.

quote:

Originally posted by mark60:
I had a coon in the yard last summer about 4 in the afternoon that stood up and snarled at me. I told it to wait a minute, went in the basement and grabbed my bow. When he reared up again I poked a nice big hole in his middle.

That reminds me of a story my friend told me years ago. It was about 30 years ago and he was a college kid. He and his parents and siblings were at their cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin in the kitchen eating lunch. They looked out the screen door and there was a coon looking in through the screen, acting weird. My friend ran and got his bow and ran out through the other door to get a shot at him. He shot the raccoon, but just sliced it along its guts and it ran off, so he and his brother followed it. When they got to where it was, it was standing on its hind legs, with its guts in its paws, chewing away at them and snarling at them. My friend put another arrow in it and killed it, then put on gloves and buried the coon and two arrows deep in the ground.

When raccoons tried to get on our back porch Mama just chased em off with a broom.

After I retired I worked for a few years as a Security Dude at a health care facility. There was a large trash can at the main entrance which the local raccoons would dump over and make a fine mess. When I would see the varmints climbing into the can, I would do as unarmeds mom did. Broom the varmints. I would often see mama coon and her babies looking at me through the glass door. I believe she was telling her kids "that's the asshole with the broom"!

We have rabies in the raccoon population here (and the foxes, bats, etc.) so any raccoon acting oddly and dripping saliva would be a cause for alarm here.

The link won't load for me (I don't let WP set cookies, which apparently breaks the site) but I'm curious as to how this was diagnosed as distemper.

quote:

The link won't load for me (I don't let WP set cookies, which apparently breaks the site) but I'm curious as to how this was diagnosed as distemper.

Robert Coggeshall was playing with his beagles outside his Youngstown, Ohio, house around noon Friday when he saw the raccoon.

The 72-year-old pushed his dogs inside as the raccoon fearlessly made its way right up to the glass door, and for a few moments, the animals sat face to face, fascinated with one another.

Coggeshall thought something was wrong with the raccoon, since it was out in broad daylight. What came next confirmed that. As Coggeshall left his garage to try to shoo the animal away, the raccoon stood up on its hind feet and flashed its sharp, white teeth and pink gums. Saliva dripped from its mouth.

Suddenly, it collapsed into a comatose-like state, Coggeshall said. It soon awoke from its lethargy, walked around for a bit, then got back up on its hind feet again.

“It was kind of startling,” Coggeshall told The Washington Post. “And it kept coming back to the house. It was at my door about two or three times.”

For two hours Coggeshall, a wildlife photographer and naturalist, watched the raccoon repeat the bizarre pattern over and over again. He took about 250 photos of the raccoon, which Youngstown police say is one of more than a dozen oddly behaving raccoons reported in the Youngstown area over the past three weeks.

Residents told police the behavior was strange, and have noted how the raccoons are out during the day and unafraid of loud noises or motions that would typically frighten them, according to WKBN-TV.

A raccoon exhibiting strange behavior was photographed by Robert Coggeshall on his Youngstown, Ohio, property on March 30. (Robert Coggeshall)

The raccoons’ behavior is so unsettling to some residents that they likened the animals to zombies, prompting headlines such as, ”Zombie Raccoons’ Are Traumatizing an Ohio Town” from Vice, which describe the raccoons as “staggering around like extras in a George Romero movie.”

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said the raccoons are likely infected with a disease called distemper, according to WKBN-TV. The viral, sometimes fatal, disease typically infects unvaccinated domestic dogs but can also infect foxes, coyotes and skunks. In 2003, the first known tiger reported to be infected with distemper wandered into the town of Pokrovka, Russia, and sat down, unfazed by the stimuli surrounding her, according to National Geographic.

It does not affect humans, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Distemper can cause brain damage, which is what likely leads to the raccoons’ fearless behavior around humans. The disease also causes respiratory disease, seizures, immobility and death, according to National Geographic.

Among raccoons, an outbreak of the disease is most likely to occur in large or concentrated populations, and can run in cycles of five to seven years, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The disease is spread when animals come into contact with the body fluids or droppings of an infected animal. While distemper is not the same as rabies, some of the symptoms are similar.

“Raccoons are really prone to getting diseases that even among themselves can be devastating to the population,” Geoff Westerfield, a wildlife biologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife, told WKBN-TV.

The disease, he said, stays local and eventually dies off. But to do that, the diseased animals often need to be trapped. Police told WKBN-TV that the 14 infected raccoons, in addition to the one in Coggeshall’s yard, have been put down.

While Coggeshall said he understands the raccoon’s death was necessary, he said he still feels a little bad for it.

“I hate to see an animal suffer. I really do,” Coggeshall told The Washington Post. “It really bothers me to see them put down like that. But something had to be done.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.c3de16b2f3b7

Thanks for posting the story, chellim1

Not just the homeowner calling it likely distemper, then, it was the Ohio DNR who presumably knows the difference. Interesting.

Making the news here.