Moving a young raccoon

[Hay Dude]

I get up close to raccoons all the time, you know to pick them up with a shovel to throw them in the end loader bucket.

That is very risky to your health. I was bitten by a wild animal and got rabies shots by advice of the PA Game commission.
Not fun to go through.

I would never suggest having only the length of a shovel between you and a possibly rabid wild animal. That thing could jump on you and bite your ass in a country second.

 

[WinterDeere]

An older friend of mine walked in on a groundhog in his shed one day, when going to fetch his Ford tractor. This thing had been digging up his shed floor for weeks, so he was so thrilled to catch it in the act that he quick grabbed a long handled 4-tine pitch fork off the wall hook, and ran the animal through with it.

Trouble was, he didn't manage to hit anything vital, apparently just fat and skin. So now this poor 75 year old man is standing in his shed, no one around and no cell phone handy, with a pi$$ed-off and somewhat large groundhog stuck on the other end of the fork. Nothing in reach to finish the job he'd started, and no easy way to let up on the thing long enough to grab something.

I forget how the story ended, we were all probably laughing too hard to even hear the end of it, but he managed to outlive the groundhog.

 

[Dftodd]

Plus... he burned up a perfectly good hat!

I throw all of our dead chickens, ground hogs, and other animals onto our burn pile, with the intent of burning them. But it's never actually come to that, they're always gone by the next day, before I've had a chance to build and light a fire. I've never seen who's carrying them off, but we have Turkey buzzards the size of Volkswagons, so they're my first suspect.

Buzzards will clean up road kill pretty fast around here. Run over a snake in the morning and its gone by the afternoon.

Same with possums, and coons.

 

[Dftodd]

At the old farm I had a local chicken farmer bring 150-200 tons of manure several times a year.
Late one summer it was very hot, 90s everyday, and he started trucking.
The manure was full of dead chickens that had succumbed to the heat. I thought this is going to smell double strong.
Wrong.
The coyotes and other scavengers must have been walking around burping and farting they were so stuffed with chicken.
Well... unless the Colonel snuck by at night.
The chickens buried in the pile were totally decomposed by spring when I spread it out.

Coyotes dont stick around my property. Closest I've seen one was a mile up the road.

Coyotes were messing with the cattle across the road.

The ranchers buddy who lives on the south side of the field, has a rifle outfitted with night vision scope.

He went out there and thinned the pack down one night. The few that escaped, won't go anywhere near that pasture.

There are a few other cattle ranchers in the area, plus hobby farmers, so i'm sure they've done some thinning themselves.

 

[MossRoad]

Our whole family had to go through rabies shots several years ago due to bats and an unvaccinated kitten. Theses days rabies shots themselves are not bad at all. Just like a flu shot in the arm. 4-5 of them spaced out over days, according to your local health department protocol.

What smarts is the Human immune globulin shots. If you're bitten, they give them around the bite wound. If you've not been bitten and just suspected of being exposed, they give them to you in your thighs and buttocks.

It's a thick med, so big needle. And, the dose is based on body weight. So big guy gets big dose = them squeezing that syrup into our muscles through a needle that looks like a turkey baster!

To speed it up and shorten the pain, they had two people stab you in each thigh at the same time. After you said ouch!, they'd flip you over and stab you in both cheeks at the same time. Then they'd sit you in a chair for 1/2 hour to observe you. I preferred to stand!

 

[MossRoad]

Years ago, our neighbor's yellow lab ran out their back door, saw a groundhog in the yard, ran over and, wanting to play, whacked it in the head with its paw. The groundhog fell over dead. The dog and the neighbor were both perplexed.

 

[bigtiller]

Our whole family had to go through rabies shots several years ago due to bats and an unvaccinated kitten. Theses days rabies shots themselves are not bad at all. Just like a flu shot in the arm. 4-5 of them spaced out over days, according to your local health department protocol.

What smarts is the Human immune globulin shots. If you're bitten, they give them around the bite wound. If you've not been bitten and just suspected of being exposed, they give them to you in your thighs and buttocks.

It's a thick med, so big needle. And, the dose is based on body weight. So big guy gets big dose = them squeezing that syrup into our muscles through a needle that looks like a turkey baster!

To speed it up and shorten the pain, they had two people stab you in each thigh at the same time. After you said ouch!, they'd flip you over and stab you in both cheeks at the same time. Then they'd sit you in a chair for 1/2 hour to observe you. I preferred to stand!

Ouch !!

 

[MossRoad]

Ouch !!

Not so bad, really. Just a big YIKES! when they jabbed us. The kids and wife handled it better than I did, but I'm twice their weight. Yeah, that's the reason.

I used to be friends with a Catholic Priest that grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. Big old farm boy. He was out shoveling manure or something and felt something scratching his leg. He thought it might have been a mouse running up his pant leg. Brushed at it, but it continued. So he whacked his leg pretty hard and out fell a dead bat. It had chewed up his leg and blood was present. Sooooo, off to the Dr. Bat tested positive for rabies. He said he had to get something like 15 shots around his belly button and it was painful! The skin all turned black in the area and he made a big circle with his two hands and placed it on his belly. He said that was not fun. He shared that story with me when he found out our family was going through it. Good guy. He passed away several years ago. I miss talking to him.

Things have progressed since then, thank goodness.

 

[WinterDeere]

Buzzards will clean up road kill pretty fast around here. Run over a snake in the morning and its gone by the afternoon.

You just reminded me of one Saturday when I passed a freshly-killed deer on the shoulder of the road, driving out the road to our marina, on my way to do some racing. There were two large turkey buzzards on the thing already, and passing on it on my way back home four or five hours later, the thing is already stripped to a skeleton.

Those also like to sit atop sailboat masts, which creates two problems, due to the size of the birds:

1. You'll arrive at the lake on a Saturday morning, and wonder who's dog shat all over your boat cover. Their turds don't look like they could even come from a bird!

2. They're big enough that they break parts on top of some of the smaller masts.

 

[Jstpssng]

I would never suggest having only the length of a shovel between you and a possibly rabid wild animal. That thing could jump on you and bite your ass in a country second.

By the time he gets that close, I doubt they are biting anything.
Although one of the nice things about having the grapple on is that you can forgo the shovel.