One morning in May I received an urgent phone call from a young man who wanted directions to our wildlife hospital. He said he had found a raccoon with two injured legs in the road. I asked if he had the raccoon contained and he said yes, that it was in a pet carrier, so I gave him directions. He arrived minutes later with an adult nursing female raccoon in a havahart trap where she had been for about two weeks without food or water. The flesh on her forearms was rotted from her putting them through the wire trying to dig out of her death trap and her chin was resting on dirt she had pulled into the cage to eat. I transferred her to a large clean kennel and gave her a bowl of water that she immediately began to drink. It was obvious to me that the unfortunate mother raccoon had been trapped and left for some days in the deadly havahart trap in the sweltering 90 degree Florida temperatures without food or water. Upon questioning the man, he admitted to having trapped her because he had been losing chickens. Twenty minutes later I checked on her and she was dead. The inside of her mouth was also rotted from trying to bite her way out of the trap. Her crime was eating chickens that did not belong to her. Ironically, rats and mice, her normal food, does more damage to chicken farmers than all the other natural predators do. Studies have shown the value to chicken farmers of having foxes and raccoons around to control the rodent populations. We often receive baby raccoons because their mothers were trapped and removed. Raccoon mothers will try until they die to get back to their babies.

In many counties in Florida, animal control agencies kill all trapped raccoons. We only protect the things we love, we only love the things we know, and we only know the things that we are taught. Even though raccoons can carry rabies, there has never been a human death of rabies contracted from a raccoon bite in this country. According to the Center of Disease Control, 90% of all rabies attacks worldwide and 99% of human deaths from rabies come from dogs. One hundred years ago 100 people a year in the United States died of rabies contracted from dog bites and that is the reason animal control organizations were founded throughout this country.  Today we protect our dogs and cats with rabies shots. We are very grateful that Osceola Animal Control works with us to save wildlife rather than destroy it.

Raccoons have always been considered to be in the bear family however, some studies now believe that they are from the weasel family. Raccoons eat mostly vegetation, insects, mice, and rats. Mothers will teach their babies what to eat and will protect them to the death. They have been observed trying to protect all baby raccoons from harm even if they are not their own. They are wonderful, loving, intelligent animals, and they deserve to live. The average weight of adult raccoons that come to our center is only between 8 and 10 pounds, or about the size of a house cat. They are often attracted to pet food and seeds left out at night. The mother and babies will come out to eat in the daytime if they cannot get enough at night. It makes me very sad to know that thousands of raccoons are trapped and killed every year in Florida because people fear these intelligent animals.