They kill by decapitation that's how you know its coon business. Found the head of a rabbit on the garage bay apron and its body over by the pond....they kill just for fun, I would run off the road to nail one with my car...and those are just the few things coons did to my farm fowl...different strokes for different folks. I would catch them in the live trap and throw the trap and all into the pond and drown the suckers....later in the day I'd pull the live trap out of the pond and chuck those suckers into the garbage......But I am glad you had one as a pet, I must have missed one....:O)
Speaking of possum, if you skin them and sent the hide off to be tanned (it would take about 50 possum) they would make a pretty jacket...they do have a nice pelt...But I pretty much left them alone, they are mostly carrion eaters, but they will do eggs if they can get them...
I knew a gal that had a pet skunk, depewed it and it was a great pet and quite clean....pretty too...But since I sold the farm, I only had to dispense one on my deck that came at night and tried to get to a robins nest with baby's that built her nest under the deck..(deck was on the second floor) Now I had a neighbor that raised a few head of cattle and he was death to any ground hog he caught..It is tough living in the country...
I do have to disagree with you on your point this thread is not about coons....someone else brought it up first, I was just saying what I thought of those rabies caring coons.
A few years ago there seemed to be a great number of coons around my woods, breaking into deer feeders and robbing my duck nests by my pond. I borrowed a wire cage trap and baited it and left it on the dam overnight. Next morning when I checked, the trap had disappeared. Later after the sun got high, I could see the trap in the water with a dead coon in it. I figured that the coon had gotten caught in the trap, then later a coyote or fox had come along, attacked the trap trying to get to the coon, and accidentally pushed it over to where it tumbled into the water. Sort of an unintentional end for the coon.