They didn’t mention a love of flashlights and Amazon deals in the article, they must be using a different definition of domestication.
I watched a raccoon eat 2 loafes of bread then spend the rest of the night trying to get into the cat food. I also watched a possum eat 5 raisens and 2 corn chips then leave.
Lost a few hens recently and moved a camera down to the barn- Cute coon has been caught on camera several consecutive nights. Who wants an adorable pet before he meets mr .22?
They’re pretty brazen here with the cat food. Pretty chubby too, I don’t know if they hibernate or not but they’d be contenders in the trash panda version of fat bear week.
Cool!
I always thought that raccoons were wild animals that could not be domesticated.
I’ve heard stories of people with raccoons as pets, and I thought that was just asking for trouble. ![]()
It may be… I had to have a family of Raccoons removed from my chimney once. The guy that did it had a Raccoon that he said was a pet. Stayed outside, but he fed it and said it would let the people that it knew pet it.
Raccoons are scavengers. Meaning they dont hunt for food, they eat leftovers from other animals and road kill.
Road kill can be pretty tasty with gravy.
I read an article in the paper when I saw family for Thanksgiving about a woman from a rural area that sent a live raccoon to President Coolidge to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. I think she mailed it somehow but they didn’t mention that in the story. Mrs Coolidge decided that wasn’t happening and made a pet out of it resulting in the raccoon climbing the Christmas tree and not wanting to climb down, making an appearance during a state dinner and other hijinks.
I meant to inform that you were being domesticated but didn’t manage to make that point.
Beat me to it, lol…
Many things taste better with gravy, especially gravy…
There’s a Reddit thread about this article, but that thread became political, so I’m not going to link to it. ![]()
I saw this article in the single newspaper I’ve gotten (within the past decade likely). Don’t know why, but they delivered a paper before Thanksgiving.
When my Father was a kid he had some pet raccoons and said that they pretty much acted like cats
Looks like someone perfected the sploot
Even raccoons pray to The Porcelain God… ![]()
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I got a family of raccoons here that eats the catfood. If there are some left, it’s the cats. If the bowl’s licked clean, it’s the raccoons.
The Grandpappy of them all is freaking huge! I had him staring at me while stuffing himself on the crunchies like they were Cheezy-Poofs, literally just grabbing them out of the bowl with his hands and shoving them into his mouth.
I even got a video (somewhere) of one walking right up to the door when I cracked it open. Dewd tried to just walk inside!
And once when I was putting out the garbage, I heard the gate jangling, and a big fat raccoon squeezed himself through, and just stared at me. I scootched down and held out my hand, and he walked right up and sniffed it. Guess he thought I had treats for him? But he knew I was the one putting out food for them (didn’t want to break his heart by telling him the food was for the cats, but…), so he knew I wasn’t about to hurt him.
Yeah, I’m like Doctor Freaking Doolittle…
To set the stage, we have a dog door that opens to a back yard surrounded by a 6ft. chain link fence.
03:17 a few years ago. Our dogs woke us up raising 21 kinds of hell in their fended back yard. It’s their "Hey! Y’all gotta come see this NOW "
bark, not the, “We think we saw a rabbit three houses away.” bark. Racoon was on the top rail of the 6ft. chain link fence looking down at them.
I got the 20ft. paint roller extension used for painting high ceilings, used it like a pool queue to knock 'coon off toward the outside. Tried 3 times. It caught itself & climbed to the top again each time.
It’s now 03:26, dogs still raising hell.
Got the mace, hit 'coon square in the face from 15ft. or so away. Twice. It rubbed its eyes & looked at me. Twice. Hmmm… thoughts of rabid 'coon being trapped inside the fence occur to me. 'Coon is on an uphill run of the fence. There’s almost always a mild breeze sinking down the hill toward our back yard in still air. It’s nice on the patio but…, Note to self; don’t stand downbreeze when spraying mace at a 'coon on the uphill run of the fence. 'Nuff said.
It’s now 03:47. Figured the quietest firearm we have is a .22LR revolver. ‘Coon being on the uphill run of the top rail, nothing is downrange except the hill maybe 20 ft’. behind it. Not being versed in 'coon anatomy, I figure the heart is somewhere behind the front shoulder joint, center mass. One shot with a hollow point & 'coon drops to the ground outside the fence. Doesn’t stir for 60 seconds.
It’s now 03:51. Hightail it into the house 'cause I don’t want to be outside if LEO comes sniffing around on report of gunshot in the neighborhood.
Come daybreak, 'coon is gone. A fox had been in the neighborhood for weeks, with a known den outside a neighbor’s back yard & young pups. I’d watched as it killed a cat across the street a few weeks before this encounter. Maybe fox got an easy free meal? Or 'coon was only wounded & crawled away? Don’t know.
At the end of the day, 'coons are wild animals. IMO best left wild. There’s plenty of dogs & domestic cats needing homes that would return affection to their bonded hooman in spades. The risk of a 'coon in a domestic setting isn’t worth it to me.
slmjim
I was going to post this story but you beat me too it. Was that one of your kin?
Well, my username used to be raccoon city, which is a reference to Resident Evil.
The fictional Raccoon City isn’t known for having raccoons–it’s known for having zombies.
So, even though I go by raccoon now and my avatar is of a raccoon, I don’t have anything to do with raccoons. ![]()
Are you sure about that??? ![]()