Urban Raccoons, Coyotes: They Live Among Us

New York City Tough

On his way to work at 5 AM every morning, my younger son crosses Central Park, from West 92 Street to the East Side. He has assured his mother Central Park is safe enough, despite the long history of attacks, muggings, the famous rape. He  says all that was from another era. 

He insists he has little to fear from human beings; it's the raccoons who bother him. A gang of them, eight or ten, hang out on an asphalt path, not far from a bench and a streetlight, and they give no ground, looking up at him, who they clearly consider an intruder on their turf.  "You looking at us? Huh? You looking at us?"

He veers off the path and hopes he'll not stumble over any of their friends in the undergrowth.

Central Park Division, Hell's Angels

The New York Times carries a story today about a licensed raccoon remover hauling off a specimen from South Park Slope, Brooklyn, the last of a brood of a dozen, and the woman who owns the townhouse, who called the pest remover, says they were pretty tough customers, and "they beat up my cat."

Yeah, right, they can be cute

But neither the guy who hauled the raccoon off in a cage nor the woman wanted to kill the bandit. And that's against New York City law. The pest remover guy, presumably, could lose his license for not killing the raccoon, but he didn't have the heart to do it.  He wouldn't give his name, for fear of governmental sanction. 

Raccoons do get rabies, which is likely the reason the law says kill them.

Good Image Marketing: Not So Cuddly in Real LIfe

Squirrels almost never get rabies. Bats do. And raccoons do. So do skunks. 

There was one particular skunk I'd have no compunction about sending back to his maker.  He lived outside, or under my house for a month or two and he squirted my dog in the face and he ambled about under the tree in our front yard as if it was the Old Salt's All You Can Eat night, and he gave no ground when I went out with my flashlight and baseball bat and pan. Just looked at me for a moment, decided I was no real threat and kept on eating the little things which fell from that tree. 

 I still don't know what that kind of tree that  is, but it has little fruity things which drop on the ground in early Fall, and the skunk apparently had a taste for them. 

Dog Unfriendly

I did not like that skunk at all. 

A friend was semi horrified at my attempts to intimidate, harm and possibly kill the skunk.  I had been thinking out loud about my options, and not wanting to have a gun, I had closed in on the idea of a bow and arrow. 

Bad Actor

"I could walk right up to within, maybe 10 feet. He ignores me. Couldn't miss from that distance."
"You wouldn't do that," she said.
"Oh, yeah? Just stay tuned. That skunk is toast."
"He's just a skunk doing skunk things."
"Which includes squirting my dog and eating my fruit tree dropping things."
"And you never even noticed the fruity things, until that skunk started eating them."
"That skunk's days are numbered."
"You are a Democrat. You value all living things. You believe in global warming and you think income inequality is obscene. Your values will not allow you to kill a living creature for eating fruity things. The penalty is disproportionate to the offense."

She had failed to perceive the level of antipathy I bore toward this particular skunk. He was a bad actor. It wasn't a racial thing or a genus thing. He was just a bad skunk. He had it coming. 

"Nobody has anything coming," she said.

But then again, consider the source. 

She has coyotes living in her neighborhood. They howl at night. She goes out for night  walks to look for them. She loves having coyotes for neighbors!

New York City Coyote

In Maryland, we lived in the woods and my sons found an eviscerated deer. The deer was partially dismembered and we looked it over, trying to imagine what sort of animal could have done that to a 500 pound deer.  I had seen a bobcat in the neighborhood, but no bobcat could have brought down a deer and done that. A cougar, more like it, but nobody had ever seen a cougar in the woods, or along the nearby Potomac.

Forgive Those Who Trespass? 

Then we heard the coyotes howling at night.