Drowning Raccoons

originally posted 14 OCT 2014

I was pregnant with my daughter and my husband was deployed. We had property in the Coastal mountains in Oregon. At that time, we had three outdoor cats. They couldn't come in because of all the poison oak. I'm allergic and they'd end up leaving the oils all over the furniture and I'd be a itchy, swollen wreck. It was okay though because these three clearly wanted to be indoor kitties.

Being pregnant and having a husband gone, I was a bit sad during that time. I was the last semester of graduate school and had a four year old son. It wasn't an easy time by any means.

One day, I noticed the cats were acting oddly. There was a scraggly looking raccoon on our porch in broad daylight. This fellow was going after the cat food and the cats were keeping their distance. This happened each day and this raccoon did not look good. I was thinking, uh oh, rabies!

Called a few different places to see if they could trap the raccoon but nobody could. Finally, the country brought me a big crate-like trap. He said to throw some cat food in the back of the trap and the door would shut automatically when the raccoon was inside. I asked what to do with him when I caught him. He said to tip the crate over and get a hose. He wanted me to drown the raccoon!

Can i just say, I LOVE animals. While my husband does hunt on occasion, I couldn't hunt unless my children needed food and there was no other way to get it. It's just me. I don't have a problem with hunting. But, I did suspect rabies and with two dogs, three cats and a little boy, I did want to take care of the problem.

A day or two later, I came home from school, the raccoon was trapped.

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This is getting long, so I'm turning this into a two-parter. Part Two:

Drowning Raccoons 

image courtesy of Pixabay