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Raccoons exist in this weird pocket of the animal kingdom composed of adorable animals that look cute but are actually mean as fuck. Up to this point, humans and raccoons have reached something of a truce agreement, where we don't try to domesticate them, let them feast on our trash, and send our cops to help them out of sewer grates when they eat too much in exchange for their mercy. But it looks like our time of great interspecies peace is about to come to an endbecause the age of the zombie raccoon is apparently upon us.
This March, residents of Youngstown, Ohio, began noticing something weird about their local raccoon population. The animals were coming out during the day and standing on their back legs, bearing their teeth and staggering around like extras in a George Romero movie, WKBN reports.
"[The raccoon] would stand up on his hind legs, which Ive never seen a raccoon do before, and he would show his teeth and then he would fall over backward and go into almost a comatose condition," Robert Coggeshall, who was walking his dogs when he spotted the raccoon in question, told WKBN. Eventually, the raccoon would shake itself out of the daze, rise back up to its hind legs, and stagger forward, before repeating the whole process over again. It was, to put it in Coggeshall's words, "extremely strange."
Ohio police have received over a dozen reports of similar sightings of these zombie-like raccoons terrorizing the Youngstown area. No one is certain exactly what is causing the weird-ass behavior, but the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says the raccoons may be suffering from a disease called distemper, rather than rabies.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d35dmk/zombie-raccoons-are-traumatizing-youngstown-ohio-vgtrn
Ohiogal
(32,005 posts)Haven't seen any of the critters as of yet, thank goodness.
Floyd R. Turbo
(26,549 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)all this banging and yelling outside my sliding door on the balcony.
It was like 6 racoons running around like crazy bashing into the glass door, jumping all over everything, knocking over flower pots and tables. I tried spraying some Clorox solution on them to get them to leave (tried water on them first). But, oh hell no. They kept running into the the door. I finally grabbed a baseball bat and sat there for several hours in case they got in. I knew they would tear the place up and likely tear me to shreds too.
They finally went away and never came back. Talking about anxiety.
Floyd R. Turbo
(26,549 posts)rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)Ohiogal
(32,005 posts)Solly Mack
(90,769 posts)Of course I don't want the human animal to suffer - but that raccoon animal was in distress and I don't want that either.
MontanaMama
(23,322 posts)I've live trapped several in my back yard who are there to get into my chicken coop. Anybody who lets their cats outside in my neighborhood is asking for it. Raccoons would eviscerate a cat in seconds.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)Laffy Kat
(16,383 posts)They also carry rabies. Give a wide berth.
LeftInTX
(25,366 posts)They will be on our deck and stand to get a peek at us. They are smart enough to get near the door, so they stand a few feet away.
All the other stuff this raccoon is doing is not normal. Poor fellow.