Rabid raccoon attack brings back memories of wildlife in our home

The attack of a rabid raccoon on 21-year-old Rachel Borch of Hope reminded me of all the wild critters that I have encountered in the wild and in our home. Fortunately, none were rabid. Rachel’s story has gotten a lot of press. She was jogging in the woods when the coon attacked her, and she grabbed and drowned it in a nearby puddle. Yikes!

I want to share with you today a story I wrote about wildlife in our home. This was in my first book, A Life Lived Outdoors, published in 2014 by Islandport Press.

Battling Wildlife in the Home

 

Running a bit late for a Selectmen’s meeting one evening years ago, I dashed down the stairs into my workshop without turning on the light. Approaching the door to the garage, I felt our cat move across my feet in front of me and reached down to pet him. Bad mistake.

The skunk blasted me right in the face, and I staggered and started running back upstairs, shedding my stinking clothing along the way before jumping into the shower. Linda later collected the clothing and threw it away.

Eventually I got to the Selectmen’s meeting. No one sat near me.

Last week I wrote about Jim Sterba’s book, Nature Wars, that offers a fascinating look at out-of-control populations of wildlife, explains why this has happened, and relates many backyard battles with a variety of critters from deer to beaver. Sterba neglected one crucial aspect of this problem, when the battles move into the home.

And I’m not just talking about mice, although we’ve done battle with plenty of them. One winter I caught 38, an even dozen of them trapped in a kitchen drawer. And this doesn’t count the mice our cat killed. Often we wake in the middle of the night to a commotion in the dining room outside our bedroom door, as the cat and his quarry careen around the room. Sometimes I have to get up and stomp the mouse to death. My stomping record is eight, in a two-week period.

Bats are a particular challenge. In the early years, I’d try to kill them with a fireplace poker. For years there was a hole in our kitchen ceiling where I once missed a bat with the poker. Since getting educated to the benefits bats bring to the neighborhood, and worried about their diminishing populations, I now catch them in a long-handled fishing net, gently releasing them outside.

Then there is the snake episode. Linda hates snakes. One day as she was washing the kitchen floor, she moved a wicker basket that I’d left outside for some time the day before, and a large snake slithered out of the bottom of the basket.

She grabbed the fireplace shovel and jumped up on a kitchen chair, gradually bludgeoning the harmless thing to death. At one point in this fierce battle, she called me. All I could do was encourage her to keep at it. She was still shook up when I got home. She still shudders when I bring up the incident.

Every wild critter that can get into the house, does so. Red squirrels are particularly nettlesome. I watch for them at the bird feeder, and if they turn toward the house after dining, I shoot them. If they head for the woods, they get a reprieve. A chipmunk currently resides in my workshop and the garage, darting into a tunnel under the cement floor when he sees me.

One sunny Saturday morning, I opened the bulkhead door to air out the cellar. A bit later, heading out of the cellar up the bulkhead’s steps, I met a huge raccoon coming down the steps. We had a stare down, and he eventually reversed course. I’m not sure what would have happened if he’d continued down the steps. He was certainly too big to stomp to death.

And then there is the night I woke to a terrible ruckus directly below my pillow, under the floor. Turned out to be mating raccoons.

One morning Lin was getting ready for school and there was a chickadee on her computer, apparently brought into the house by the cat. Another time, the cat brought in a sparrow. Lin yelled at the cat and he dropped the bird. It promptly lifted off and flew into my office. Lin put on a pair of gloves and chased the bird around the room, finally catching and setting it outside. Not all wildlife-in-the-home stories have a bad ending.

But some of these encounters are frightening, especially the rabid fox that entered our garage while I was out of town. Lin called the local game warden and he came and shot it. Our dog, chained in the front yard, had to be quarantined for a while, even though we weren’t sure it got near the fox. All was well that ended well.

And I guess that’s the message here. Choosing to live in and around their homes, we must expect, occasionally, that these wild critters will like our homes. Some we can live with. Some not so much.

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.