My father has been trying to raise a few chickens and
something has gotten in and killed both broods that he was
raising. We think it is raccoons which are native to North
America and are curious little animals but very destructive.
I was reading about them on the web and got more curious
as I went. I even found you could download raccoon sounds and
videos.
This is all very fine but I began to wonder if they also
live in Europe and the UK. They do, but they probably shouldn't
at all.
I found an article from one of the London papers which
you can find if you use google and search for raccoons+UK which
says that they have been imported there as pets but when they
reach sexual maturity, they get a real attitude and their owners
can't handle them any longer so some just let them go in to the
wild.
British wild life experts are very worried and they
should be.
The article I read said that that animal which comes in
the night and gets in to your garbage bin scavenging for food
and scattering the contents from one end of the street to the
other may not be a fox, but may be a raccoon.
It seems that none other than Herman Goering, the Nazi,
brought a pair to Germany in 1940 and turned them loose and they
are now 5-hundred-thousand strong in Germany.
We, of course, have them here all over North America
where they are native and they are still a huge problem. If they
get loose in the UK where they have no real natural enemies, you
have no idea what you are in for.
They are about the size of a small dog but have
human-like hands and a keen mechanical sense. They can work just
about any simple latch and they can decimate a chicken pen in no
time flat. They can lift lids, open doors and get in to or chew
through about anything you put outside. They are known to chew
through wooden shingles on roofs and make a home in your attic.
They can do the same to chimnies and the crawl space under
houses and decks.
My father told me this evening about some neighbors near
where he used to live who were away, once, when raccoons broke in
to their kitchen and thoroughly destroyed it in a weekend.
They are related to pandas and bears, but they could be
right from the Devil for all the mess they make.
They are coming to a town near you unless, of course, they are
already there.
Martin
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