What's lurking around your lumber piles?

[ohsoloco]

This afternoon I was out working in the backyard talking quietly to myself when a little old lady who walks her dog near the house came up to me and said there was an animal over between my wood piles that didn't look too good.  After finishing what I was doing I wandered over to my lumber piles and noticed a grey fox just standing there...more like wobbling.  He looked like someone trying to stand up that had too much to drink.  I've never seen a fox around the house before, and he just stood there looking kinda confused for over an hour while we waited for the police to show up...who basically just watched the neighbor put it down with a .22.   It was a very clean looking animal...just wondering what was really wrong with it.  We assumed it had rabies, but don't know....luckily it wasn't aggressive since I almost walked on it when I went looking for it the first time  

[Tom]

Rabies is a good enough guess to be putting it down.  You sure don't want to take chances with Rabies. That was a pretty good decision on somebody's part.

[biziedizie]

Maybe he got into some antifreeze, seen a dog do that once and he looked real drunk, and after I shot him he looked real dead!
 They say that a few spoons of that stuff will kill animals but what I don't understand is how do the drunks on skid row drink that and still live? Any Docs here that can answer that?

      Steve

[Tom]

I don't think they do live very long, Bizi.  Bye the Way,  I understand that Rabies is viable in a dead animal for a considerable time after death.  The word out here is that you shouldn't harvest Coon Tails from Road Kill because of it.  I wouldn't look at that fox as a pelt if I were you until I checked it out with someone who know for sure.

[beenthere]

Hopefully the police saw to it that the dead animal was tested for rabies. Might be important how it was disposed of, so other animals wouldn't eat on it. Maybe not.  ???

Had a similar experience with a grey fox about 20 years ago. It acted just as you described. County humane society showed up to kill it and take it in for testing. Their comment was that it may have a type of mange, that was going around and tough on the fox population, even though the fur looked to be in reasonable condition. Not like mange is sometimes seen, where the animal has lost large patches of hair, and I guess, die of hypothermia or something similar.

[ohsoloco]

Actually, the cop just wanted to make sure it was buried so that other animals couldn't get at it....it's about two feet under now in the back yard.  I wasn't too enthusiastic about doing this....would've preferred if someone came to take it away  :-/

[ohsoloco]

Bizie, he didn't look too dead after the neighbor shot him...his tail did a wild little dance  :D   Reminded me of the groundhogs that wander into the garden long enough for me to get the scope on them  ;D

[EZ]

Few yrs ago the kids had a pet raccoon, they raise it from drinking out of a baby bottle. When it got older I told them to let it go, they did but it just sayed hear driven me crazy. DanG thing wood get in every thing, poop all over the place, reach in the bolt bin & pull out a hunk of poop, walk in the barn & step in poop. One day I heard him outside the barn doing something stupid, I look out & he was eating a dead rat. I started to go after him to take the rat off of him cause I just put rat poison out a few days early. But I thought, all the hick with it, I'm tired of the coon poop all over the place. The next day their he was, looking like he tied on some 3 day drunk. I told my wife & kids that I think the old coon has got rabies & I better shoot it, coarse they said no that it was probably a little bit sick & it wood get better. Well the DanG thing got better & I had to put up with coon poop for another 4 yrs. >:(
EZ

[biziedizie]

Don't even get me started talking about raccoons! When me and the ex lived on Saturna island one of the little buggers decided he wanted to come by for dinner and Susan wanted to give it some food. I told her not to as the rest of them would follow but would she listen? Of course not! Two weeks later the whole tribe was hanging around and I couldn't believe how many of them there were. They made a mess every where and they would fight all night and in general they were just a pain! She thought they were cute and fed them and I thought they were a pain but there was nothing I could do as you weren't allowed to shoot your guns on the island.
  We did have deer that would come to the front door for food and that was pretty cool. Kinda neat seeing the wild deer being so tame as they new nobody could shoot them.


    Steve

[Jason_WI]

Coon bait.

I can of Coke or something sweet.

I cup of Golden Marlin(sp?) fly bait

Stir it up good in a small coolwhip container and set out in your sweet corn patch.

Guaranted to work every time. No guns needed, just a shovel to bury them.....

Every year those DanG coon would eat ALL of our sweet corn, every last cob, and we usually planted a 1/2 half acre! Not last year, my dad set out 2 containers of that concocshun' and there were dead coon, possum, and skunk and they were not more than 10 feet from one of the containers. That was the first year we ate sweet corn.

<<WARNING>>

Tie up the animals you want living like your hunting dog and such because if they eat that stuff there ain't no hope for them.

Jason

[Weekend_Sawyer]

 Isn't that called Golden Mallory. We used to use that around the horse farm. In the summer the flys would get thick. We would mix it up and put it around on empty feed bags until the goats started eating it, bags and all. It did not seem to bother them but we stopped before it did. I never saw a thing that could eat poison ivy, multifloral rose, anything like a goat. I never saw one eat a tin can but I did see one eat the bumper stickers off my truck. They would do a very good job clearing off the fence lines.

[Tim]

I was doing a job in the north end of Algonquion park a few years back. We left the cabin we were staying in for the weekend. When we got back on Monday morning, we found that the coons had gotten in. They made off with all of our Mr. Noodles, a new bag of garbage bags, a tub of peanut butter (which would have been no small task) and a can opener. It occurs to me that if the coons figure out the can opener, we are all screwed. Sorry, no rabies stories.

[ohsoloco]

My neighbor brough home two kittens the other week, and one of them got scared off and went for the brush.  After about a week of trying to catch it, his wife went out and bought one of those metal traps and baited it with cat food.  He watched with binoculars one evening as two coons tipped the cage on its side, then proceeded to scoop paw-fuls of catfood out until the can was empty.