2. baseball bat
Although discharging a firearm is technically legal within the city limits where I live, I would not do it. I would use one of these:
Posted on 06/04/2011 8:39:31 AM PDT by billorites
Piercing, terrible screams shook Roddy Muir out of his sleep at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.
“It sounded like a young child was being thrown around — and I could hear this banging and racket,” says Muir, 43, who lives on Campbell Ave., near Bloor St. W. and Lansdowne Ave.
“I ran into the back of my yard,” said Muir, a voice actor who had fallen asleep on a couch on the main floor of his house.
What he saw was a familiar sight.
Last summer, behind his house, Muir saw a man attack raccoons with a pronged implement. In that incident, he said, he saw the man stab at raccoons on the ground and puncture them so they were screaming.
“I yelled at him,” said Muir, who saw the raccoons run off. He described it as “surreal” and he didn’t report the incident, hoping it wouldn’t happen again.
But when he heard the screams again on Wednesday, he feared something similar was happening.
Muir said he saw one baby raccoon cowering on the ground.
A man swung a spade at another baby raccoon on a fence, knocking it to the ground and hitting it a number of times with the shovel, he said.
The baby raccoon was screaming. Muir was beside himself. This time, he intervened.
“I was swearing my head off. I said, ‘What are you doing? I told him he was a f---ing psycho.”
The animal was screaming and in such agony, Muir told the man to kill it and put it out of its misery.
Muir said the man looked at him and said, “I’m not going to kill it.”
“I said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Muir recounted. “He swept his arm around and said ‘They’re destroying my garden.’ ”
Muir said he told the man he was going to grab his cellphone and call police. The dispatcher could hear the injured raccoon’s screams.
Meanwhile, he said, the mother raccoon was nearby — he thinks she had three other babies with her.
She came down to the injured, crying baby that had been hit with the spade and picked it up. “It was still alive but it was really smushed and flopping around and crying,” Muir said.
The raccoon and its baby got away.
A man was arrested after police arrived on the scene.
A baby raccoon was taken to Toronto Animal Services and supervisor Fiona Venedam said it should recover. The tiny animal fractured several toes and may have a broken leg, she said.
“He’s a pretty feisty little guy,” she said. By late Wednesday, the raccoon was well enough to be transferred to Procyon Wildlife Veterinary and Rehabilitation Services in Beeton, Ont.
Animal Services hopes to eventually release the raccoon back into the same area.
Later on Wednesday, Muir said he saw the mother raccoon come back.
“It looked like she was looking for her baby . . . it tore my heart out,” he said.
Dong Nguyen, 53, of Rankin Cres., whose backyard abuts Muir’s, has been charged with cruelty to animals and possessing a dangerous weapon. No one responded to knocks on the door of Nguyen’s home.
Neighbours who live on Nguyen’s street had only good things to say about him on Wednesday.
Don Westacott, 53, who lives several houses away, has known Nguyen for a number of years and has always found him pleasant. He, Nguyen and other neighbours lived together in a nearby apartment building before they bought new semi-detached homes on the street about a decade ago.
Nguyen is very devoted to his garden, Westacott said. “He’s always out looking after his plants — they’re like his kids.”
Westacott said raccoons are real pests in the neighbourhood, always getting into garbage.
Nguyen is scheduled to appear in court on July 13.
Dos and don'ts of removing pesky raccoons
Got raccoons in your house?
They’re a wild bunch and they’ve got as much protection from harmful eviction as you do.
It’s easy to stop them from getting inside but they’re difficult to remove once they’ve set up house in your roof, walls and under the porch.
Pest control firms must follow the provincial law that protects wildlife such as raccoons, squirrels and skunks from harm — even when they cause homeowner havoc.
“The law states you are not allowed to take them more than a kilometre from where they are trapped and, obviously, you can’t kill them,” said Iris Roth, co-owner of Delta Pest Control Inc., a family-owned Toronto area firm that’s been in the business since 1959.
She said getting raccoons out of your home involves placing a one-way door at the animal’s point of entry so they can get out, but not back in.
If they are trapped in a cage, food and water must be provided. If raccoon pups have been separated from their mother they must be fed and cannot be removed until they are six weeks old.
“As soon as they are trapped and we get a call from the homeowner we have to pick it up. If there’s a full nest and the mother comes out we have to put the babies in a box near the house or the mother will take apart the roof to get back in,” Roth said.
The cost for the removal of one to three raccoons with a one-year guarantee they won’t come back is about $375.
Removal of parents and a large litter can cost $1,000 or more.
This is the busiest time of year for pest control firms as all wildlife is in breeding and nurturing mode, which means critters like raccoons are foraging to feed their broods.
“We get quite a few calls this time of year because the young are being born and they’re coming out of their nests,” said Fiona Venedam, supervisor with Toronto Animal Services.
She said there does not appear to be more complaints than usual this season and notes the arrest of someone accused of harming raccoons is rare in Toronto.
“This is probably the first cruelty complaint — where wildlife is concerned — I’ve heard of in the last 10 to 15 years,” Venedam said.
However, Toronto Police Service confirms that a man was charged in 2003 with cruelty to animals after beating a raccoon and putting it in a dumpster. The raccoon in that instance was so badly injured it had to be euthanized.
Animal shelters will take in motherless babies and try to get them to wildlife rehabilitators who raise them until they’re old enough to go back into the wild. If not, they are euthanized at the shelter.
Raccoons, like all wild animals, are drawn to food sources but humans can easily deter them.
“Secure your garbage and remove the means for them to get into your house. Keep composters enclosed and don’t feed your pets outside,” Veredam suggests.
She said because they are natural climbers, raccoons get into roofs by scaling old ladder-style television antennas, overhanging tree branches and clawing and wedging their way between homes separated by a small gap.
“They need something to grab onto to be able to climb. A smooth surface like a metal (or plastic) barrier at the foot of trees will prevent them from getting up there,” she said.
--Henry Stancu, Staff Reporter
Our “mama cow” ended up becoming burger.
I find it easier to simply call them all democrats.
We have names a few of our ducks and geese, but those are our breeding stock.
I give lib names to the ones I plan to eventually send to the table.
Next Thanksgiving, we plan to butcher Pelosi.... and for Christmas we’re having Obama for dinner. Unfortunately, the neighbor’s dog killed Reid. I’ll probably feed McCain to our dog.
LOL... You should see mine. #81. ;>)
In California, we had a pretty much bullet proof back yard with no vegetable garden — in California, you don’t need one — and let the critters roam. But the raccoons were killing the goldfish in the pond and leaving half-eaten bodies around.
We happened to have some flagstones that we had been lugging around from house to house, and we put some bricks in the pond and then piled up a bunch of the flagstones in a secure jumble. The fish knew what to do, and the raccoons moved on to greener (or fishier) pastures.
You don’t have to kill them at all. There is almost always another solution.
Getting a large dog works very well with raccoons too. They just stay away.
Chickens are really quite bloodthirsty.
My gramma’s flock would eat any field mouse they found with horrid gusto.
My grandad built her a concrete block everything-proof chicken house after weasels slaughtered her beloved Aracunas one night.
I raised 5 ducks in the kitchen.
For years, they followed me everywhere I went around the property, like little funny looking dogs.
One night, the Dobes started barking at the front window and I ran out to check the ducks, only to have them charge into the kitchen with a really nasty skunk on their heels.
They *knew* to quack and alert me and head for the door.
I spent the night consoling them beside the wood stove.
[they were still shaking from fear]
The next morning, the skunk was gone and I opened the door to let them out and all 5 of them just stuck their heads out, craning about to be *sure* Demon Skunk was gone.
I miss those silly things...:)
Even varmints deserve a quick death. Torture and torment are the amusements of sick little minds.
That’d be it.
It truly pains me to read the torture by antifreeze stories
Your dogs aren’t on something like this?
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=1460
If not, they should be.
Worm eggs can live in soil for *years* after some critter has passed through, not mention heartworm carrying mosquitoes.
Lol!
Don't forget the WEINERS!!
OMG...LOL
You’re not as bad as my mom.
She’d name the steers things like Pinky and Snowball.
I’d be responsible for tending them and nothing kills your appetite like biting into a steak and having your mother say “Pinky sure is tender”.
Aaaaccck!
Coons and cranes were frequenting my Koi/Comet pond.
So...I lurked at the back door one night until one or the other showed up and then let loose the Ibizan pack.
That sure cured that problem...LOL
[I thought the coons were gonna have heart attacks]
;]
I do still have one huge uppity possum who refuses to play dead.
The dogs charge her and she stands her ground, hisses, stink bombs them and they leave her be.
While they’re off sniffing other, less snarky things, I escort her out of the yard.
She’s knows the drill, by now.
Then -don’t- go look up the symptoms/systemic effects of it.
A friend of mine had a pot bellied pig named Dianne Fineswine.
Raccoon and opossum infestations are an absolute horror. In afflicted residential areas (they are mainly urban scavengers now) they make rats seem relatively harmless, quiet and docile. They can and will bore melon sized holes through any wall, soffit, eave or roof to make way into a home, where they will merrily set about ripping apart insulation, wiring and anything they wish to use for nesting materials. There they will breed, introduce waves of fleas, stench and dirt.
They are, outside of the wild, a real hazard. Aww but they are so cuuuuuute(!) that most ordinance protect them like cows in old India.
Amen.
Would the same reporter use the word "baby" to describe a human fetus?
They would have no problem with killing human nuisances.
I always put out little bowls of automotive glycol based antifreeze in my garden. I use it to get rid of slugs. I can’t help it if the racoons love to drink it too and die of massive kidney failure and stomach lining haemorrage.
Although discharging a firearm is technically legal within the city limits where I live, I would not do it. I would use one of these:
Horse manure! A pest animal is a pest animal. They shouldn't be tortured, but killing them is sometimes necessary. What would you do if you saw a coyote attacking your pet cat or dog?? Call the Humane Society???
I was out the other day hunting groundhogs for a farmer who called me. Got 4 in an hour. A 6MM with ballistic tips does a nice job.
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