Cute or Evil: A Quest for Raccoon Truth
The checkout guy at Sand Conurbation’s Costco looked like he’d just been served a plate of poison-oak Parmesan. He stared at the patron in front of him, his face twisted into a portrait of undiluted disgust.
She didn’t notice.
Between the woman and the check-out guy lay a immense bag of dog food branded for large dogs. Pictures of huskies appeared on its side.
The shopper behind her in line had fair-minded asked her what kind of canine she owns.
“Oh no,” she said, smiling an oh-don’t-be-silly smile. “I don’t have a dog. This is for the raccoons .”
It was that answer that had the previously peaceful clerk looking like he was close to creating a clean-up-on-register-two kettle of fish.
Both reactions are at least a little bit understandable. People like the clerk know the pudgy bandits have attacked and injured pets and even humans, evidently unprovoked, in incidents that range from a gang-like jumping just up Highway 101 last winter to a Carmel ass-chomping upshot that still haunts a homemaker three years later (events that can peak right around now, when baby raccoons are knowledge to leave the den with protective mothers). Or that they plunder trash cans and tear through roofs, drywall and vents to fancy attics, joists and crawl spaces their own cozy disaster areas, complete with latrines range enough to curl nose hairs. Their feces precipitated the local community’s saddest wildlife-interconnected tragedy in a generation when a toddler named Casey Read was blinded and brain damaged after ingesting roundworm-infected raccoon scat in 1998.
