Wild Creatures of the Night ... Fierce Beasts .. Incredible Photo

[JimT]

It's been a battle here on the San Gabriel River!

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[3leggedturtle]

I think you've had too much coffee! OR not enough yet....

[JimT]

Just practicing my journalistic skills to keep up with the current trends among "reporters" ....

I turned him loose. They aren't destructive like the raccoons are.

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[wvfarrier]

I caught truck loads of those little boogers, they steal my chicken eggs. I usually drive about 10 miles away and let them loose......now the raccoons, they get the pew pew.

[AJMD429]

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I've witnessed a possum grab a sleeping chicken by the leg and slowly (they do everything s-l-o-w-l-y... ) eat it alive, while the other slumbering birds on the same roost just clicked nervously and shifted around. They aren't as harmless as they seem.

But raccoons are definitely more aggressive, and more prone to tearing into things.

[Old Savage]

They are fierce. Killed one with a 4 iron that I caught in a trap in the green house, ugly battle, wouldn’t care to do it again.

[JimT]

Yessir .. they will do that given a chance. We have a hot fence around the chicken coop and the door is a dusk to dawn electric sliding door ... shuts at sundown, opens at sunup. We have found a possum dead in the electric fence. It's hard on snakes also.

[piller]

Persimmon tree in the back yard attracts those ugly critters. The Irish Terrierist mix is scared of them. The Rhodesian Ridgeback mix kills them as casually as can be.

[.45colt]

They would be the perfect critter to put in a bad neighbors car some night........and wait for the show in the morning. .

[JimT]

They would be the perfect critter to put in a bad neighbors car some night........and wait for the show in the morning. .

I have heard of them being in a mailbox. I only heard about it. I did not see it.

[44shooter]

They are about the toughest creatures I have ever seen. I killed a couple with a pump up pellet rifle. It was gruesome and prolonged. I don’t think I would kill another unless it was actively doing something harmful. At the time my daddy was a coon hunter. Coon hunters didn’t care for them because the dogs would tree them and they were worthless. Now coons are too so no one hunts them any more.

[GunnyMack]

Lookie there, a Pennsylvania road otter in Texas!
Years ago when I learned about antifreeze, its effects I had to try it. Few days later I found a dead road otter on my walk to the bus stop. That night my neighbor buddy and I were laying under a spruce tree, possum on a skate board and a string tied to the skate board ready to pull it across country road traffic. We did that for a couple nights having a grand time. Then a car hit it, wrecked the skate board and the red & blue lights came on! We beat feet into the woods even though we could hear the local chief of police laughing !

[765x53]

I put out extra cat food for them. I like having them around to eat the slugs off of my sidewalk.

[jeepnik]

Since I don't have chickens, but do have other pests which these criters eat, I welcome them. Raccoons are trapped and killed along with coyotes. These last two are destructive and hard on pets.

[AmBraCol]

Not a bad critter to have around unless you've got chickens or other poultry. We started missing chickens way back when and couldn't figure what was happening, until the night we had company that stayed past our accustomed 9 p.m. bed time. Dad was traveling so Mom came into the bedroom as I was peeling off my shirt and said, "There's something in the chickens!" I grabbed the 32 gauge shotgun and some of my "jaguar loads", (a 20 gauge measure of Tupán powder under a fiber wad pushing a hefty charge of 3T shot out of a full brass shotshell) and my brother grabbed the flashlight. We went out to the chicken pen and there was a "mucura" (Brazilian name for the 'possum) going up an old ladder we'd leaned against the back wall of the coop. That glorified rat had figured out how to squeeze between the wall and a slightly warped lathe that held the chicken wire across the top of the pen up against the wall to keep the chickens in and the varmints out. It would squeeze in, grab a chicken and drag it through the gap, into the woods and munch it down. When we showed up and illuminated it, It dropped the hen that it'd grabbed and sat there on the top rung and looked at us. My brother centered it well with the beam of the flashlight and I cut loose with the old Boito shotgun. That was an educational experience.

• 1. 1" concrete slabs such as made up the back wall of the chicken pen won't stop a charge of heavy shot out of a heavily loaded 32 gauge shotgun.
  2. It is possible to cut a possum in two with a heavily loaded 32 gauge shotgun.
  3. It is advisable to poke the muzzle of the shotgun THROUGH the chicken wire instead of shooting with it on the outside.
  4. The 1" hole in the concrete wall of the chicken pen was nothing in comparison with the 2' or so hole the shot blew through the chicken wire.

That was the last 'possum that got any of our chickens, but it wasn't the last one killed on the place, just the last one I killed. We had a mongrel bitch named Bolinha (bow LEAN yuh) that hated 'possums with a passion. She'd run them down, grab and shake them 'til they played 'possum and then shake them 'til there was no heartbeat left. Then she'd slobber like a dog with rabies while she'd rub her face all over the lawn trying to get rid of the taste. One night she treed one on a fence post out in front of Dad and Mom's window, and wouldn't shutup about it. Dad went out and pocked it off the post and she did her thing. Somehow none of the rest of them learned that trick of getting through the wire of the chicken pen, I guess Bolinha got them before they could reconnoiter sufficiently.

[Ysabel Kid]

Jim, you should be more careful. It could have turned on you. I'm thinking the .577 Nitro Express would be the proper medicine...

[piller]

Once the Ridgeback mix snaps their spine, he has no more interest in them. The Irish Terrier mix is scared of them no matter what. She kills squirrels.

[44shooter]

I don’t get the war on raccoons some of you have. I have never had them do anything to me. I have killed some when hunting. Caught one live once. I have just watched most. But I have never had them tear up anything or kill chickens. And they live pretty much everywhere around here.

[octagon]

I was losing a few chickens, and one night real late I'm hear what sounds like a fight on the back patio. Grabing the nearest gun, a .38, i run out the back door and there in the light is a big coon strangling a hen and growling at me. As i aim at his head and get ready to squeeze i realize i'm about to launch 158g through a coon, to bounce off the concrete and through the glass door at the sleeping wife...instead I grab the mop and launch It ike a spear at the retreating coon still with hen in tow and score a direct hit. The coon drops the hen and runs into the night hungry. A few nights later i catch a small one in the livetrap while the big one growls, during mid growl i give him one right in his open mouth with the pellet gun, he runs about 25 feet inside a wood pile and expires.

[crs]

We have a couple of big dogs and one of them guards the chickens. No varmints around since I shot a wandering skunk a few years ago. The occasional egg stealing snake dies of indigestion from the ceramic eggs in the hen houses.
If you think a pit bull cannot jump or is slow, you have not seen one after a squirrel or other land based pest.

[TraderVic]

It's been a battle here on the San Gabriel River!

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They're commonly referred to as "grinners" around here. Good to know you're controlling your border down there Jim

[1894cfan]

You guys ever have a 'coon poop in your yard? It ain't pretty! Since the first time it happened I kill any I see! One time I got one in the chest with a filed down CB short and by some strange chance hit the heart! It just grunted and fell off the fence, dead.

[AmBraCol]

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[765x53]

I don’t get the war on raccoons some of you have. I have never had them do anything to me. I have killed some when hunting. Caught one live once. I have just watched most. But I have never had them tear up anything or kill chickens. And they live pretty much everywhere around here.

Buy a hunting or trapping license. Take them legally during the open season when the fur is prime. Otherwise you are wasting a valuable resource as well as some delicious meet that is indistinguishable from beef.

[Scott Tschirhart]

I skinned many a possum, coon and fox back in my childhood. My brother and I ran a trap line every morning in the winter.

Hell, what could we spend money on other than .22 shells! We had plenty.

I hope I don't ever have to work that hard for a few dollars again.

[AmBraCol]

Stirring the pot...

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[AJMD429]

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We have a five-foot 2"x4" mesh fence with the bottom 6" into a trench of coarse limestone and topped with a really hot electric wire, yet periodically raccoons still manage to get in and kill chickens, sometimes with the helpful tunnelling of a groundhog, or by managing to find a place the wire is held aside by a fallen branch.

I've never eaten possum but last fall we were losing a lot of chickens and when we have done from a dozen down to only two, I started trapping raccoons and my urban-raised son in law asked me not to just shoot and dump (the carcass in the field for the buzzards) the next one. I assumed he was being 'soft', but in reality he said he had always wanted to try cooking raccoon, and also wanted to practice his field-dressing skills my own son recently taught him on a deer. (fer a city-kid, he's shapin' up perty good... ) Sure enough, the meat was really GOOD. I assumed he had some fancy marinade or something, but my daughter said he just soaked it overnight in saltwater.

Worth trying for sure.

As far as feeling bad with pest control, I don't. My house is off limits to anything with more than two legs, and the garden and farmyard off limits to predators. I'll fence when I can, and I try hard to avoid harming low-population predators like owls or hawks (at least around here) but raccoons are so prolific here we see a new one dead on the road every week and yet the population is stable, so I just humanely eliminate them.

I work and pay taxes to maintain another 40 acres or so that the raccoons and their friends can do what they please on, so I don't feel I'm making a bad ecological impact and when I eliminate them I am sure to do it humanely.

[hondo1892]

My old mountain cur caught one and brought it up on our front porch one night. I could hear the bones cracking and he shook it like a rag doll. I took it from him and tossed it of the porch and planned on planting him the next morning. To my surprise he was gone in the morning. I found some blood on the porch where Hondo had been shaking it. I don't think a coyote came up and snatched it away either because Hondo never barked that night. I kill them on my place because they rob turkey nest just like coons and skunks.

[Swagman]

That is one fierce looking critter! The Aussie version is a lot cuter (although if you corner them they can do considerable damage with their claws and teeth). Had to stop giving them treats as the place was getting overrun with them every night!

[gcs]

Actually have a big one in the live trap waiting to go into witness relocation.
I release the possums, someplace else, they do eat chickens if they can get to them. and sometimes get into the garbage. Coons do not get a pass. yeah you can eat them, and the fur is worth something, currently under a buck if you can find anyone to buy them, and it better be a 2x or larger of good color, so essentially worthless.
I keep them controlled around the house, but they just make more.

[Griff]

Lookie there, a Pennsylvania road otter in Texas!
Years ago when I learned about antifreeze, its effects I had to try it. Few days later I found a dead road otter on my walk to the bus stop. That night my neighbor buddy and I were laying under a spruce tree, possum on a skate board and a string tied to the skate board ready to pull it across country road traffic. We did that for a couple nights having a grand time. Then a car hit it, wrecked the skate board and the red & blue lights came on! We beat feet into the woods even though we could hear the local chief of police laughing !

[piller]

How many heart attacks did you cause before that Chief of Police drove over that skateboarding raccoon? Hope a few drivers were wide awake after that.