A Sad Tale

Our weather this week has been unseasonably warm and I decided to take Thursday night off to enjoy the weather Thursday and today.  Thursday I spent the day in the yard which Sami and Miko liked as well.  I hooked them up to their leads and they played and dug holes and had all kinds of fun while I worked.  Today I decided to spend some time at the Toledo Zoo to do some photography.  I really wasn't having a good day up there so I didn't stay long.

I got home to find a rather large raccoon in my front yard next to one of my maple trees.  It didn't seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere.  I didn't have a good feeling about this.  I saw the neighbor guy across the street and just jokingly I asked him if one of his pets had gotten loose.  He was just as surprised as I was to see the raccoon.  He came over and started talking to it.  It acted like it was going to climb the tree, but after only going up about a foot, it slid back down.  About this time, the two guys next door came home from work on their motorcycles and they came over to see the raccoon.  Three more people came over from next door and then the guy that lives on the other side came home and soon I had quite a few people there checking out the raccoon.

We stood and watched it for a little bit.  It did a little bit of twitching and panting and I was pretty convinced at that point that there was definitely something wrong with this raccoon. So, while I went inside to call Animal Control, everyone else stayed to keep an eye on the raccoon.  Well, they only had 1 officer on duty so they said it would be awhile before he would get there.  So, we watched the raccoon some more.  A couple times he would fall over and it looked like it was having some kind of seizures.  Then it would get up and start walking around, I should say stumble around as it wasn't moving very good at all.  I ended up getting one of my rakes out to corral it back if it tried to stray very far.  After about an hour, it just laid down on it's stomach and occasionally it would twitch it's ears or open it's eyes.  It didn't seem like it was going to live that much longer.

It took Animal Control 1 1/2 hours to get to my house. He got the stick with the noose to grab the raccoon.  At that point, the raccoon did some growling as he was put into the cage.  I asked the officer what he thought might be wrong with the raccoon.  He said it was most likely Distemper.  He said that they have had a lot of raccoons this year with Distemper.  In fact, he already had 2 raccoons in his van that were acting the same way and he said he had another one to pick up just around the corner from my house.  I have read that Distemper can really become bad in the raccoon population to the point that it will completely wipe out the raccoons in large areas.

So, since Distemper can be transmitted to dogs, that's a very good reason why you should make sure your dog has been vaccinated against it.  I did take a few photos of the raccoon before he took a turn for the worse.  In fact by looking at the pictures, you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with it.

  I hate to see any animal put down, but when you have a diseased animal like this, I think it's for the better.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.  I plan on doing some things with the girlies.  It's going to be another nice day so we will take a long walk in the park and then go to their favorite store.  We are also going to see about getting some of those AntlerZ.  I did find one store so far that carries them, but it's not one that we normally go to.  We will see if PetSmart carries them first and then if they don't have them, we will go to the other store.  I really think Sami needs something like this to keep her occupied when she starts into one of her ice cube binges.  She has really been driving me crazy today.  LOL

Two is more fun then one.