More than 100 raccoons besiege house of woman who had been feeding them

[DBoon]

Feeding wild raccoons around her home had seemed harmless enough, if odd, for one woman in the north-west for 35 years – until about 100 of them surrounded her home and demanded food.

The woman, who has not been named, was essentially trapped in her home near Poulsbo, Washington, and scared as the animals can be aggressive. She called the sheriff’s office, saying the raccoons were around her place day and night after their population “exploded” about six weeks ago.

“Somehow, the word got out in raccoon land and they all showed up to her house expecting a meal,” Kevin McCarty, a spokesperson for the Kitsap county sheriff, told local NBC station 9News.

He sent deputies to help the woman.

“They were shocked. They had never seen that many raccoons in one place. Nobody ever remembers being surrounded by a swarm of raccoons. This was a first,” he told the TV station.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/09/washington-woman-raccoons

[XanaDUer2]

1. Wow nt

[Traildogbob]

2. Please

Do not send this to Steelo Brim, Rob’s cohost on ridiculousness. The man is horrified over these beasts. 😱😱😱😱

[BComplex]

3. The ghost of Alfred Hitchcock wants to do a sequel of "The Birds".

This is the first ad to run for the opening!

[Joinfortmill]

4. Google is your friend, people. Use it.

[Intractable]

5. Exponential growth - starts slow, then explodes

[zanana1]

6. Let me tell you my squirrel story.

I've always liked squirrels and my cats absolutely loved looking at them from the windows. One day, I left a little dish of peanuts out for them. Well, word gets around in the animal kingdom and before we knew it, we were buying 30 lb. bags of them every week. This went on for a few months until they got in the attic. I didn't want to leave them without an acquired food source, so I started weaning them off the peanuts.
I didn't think they'd actually get angry. We had to leave our house from the front door for an entire season. We were afraid of the squirrels.

[Hotler]

8. They only eat one to every two they hide or bury. I used to put peanuts out at the bird feeders and the squarrels would

get some too. A couple of summers I grew weed in five gallon buckets in the backyard. I'd find buried peanuts or sprouts in the buckets. I'd find peanuts buried in the rain gutters when I cleaned them.

[Hotler]

7. I had a raccoon rattle the screen door wanting in one sumer night. One of my cats has learned to rattle the screen door

when he wants in. The raccoon must have been watching. One night the door rattled and I blindly reached around from my desk and started to open the door, I'm glad I looked. The little fucker was about to come in. I always look now. And take a hard look at the cat to see that he's not bringing in any mouse kills, he likes to show me

[mike_c]

9. this actually happened to me, too

True story. Back in the early 1990s I was in grad school in Georgia. A few friends and I rented a cabin at a coastal state park for the weekend, I *think* it was in Florida, but I can't recall for sure, so maybe southern GA. It was on a bay, across which sat a paper mill that was lit up at night like the mother ship retrieving ET. We arrived with a sheet of blotter acid and other assorted party favors. I was the cook. We stopped and bought a mess of shrimp off a boat, so when we arrived in late afternoon we downed a few squares of blotter and I commenced to clean a couple buckets of shrimp. About 6:00 PM or so a ranger visited us to inquire whether we "needed anymore sheets," then was perplexed when we laughed so hard.

Apparently the raccoons out on the peninsula were accustomed to eating scraps from the cabins, so as dusk descended the 'coons began to gather in the front yard. They mostly sat on their haunches waiting silently, spread out, and as more arrived they began to crowd the boardwalk up to the cabin, so we were literally trapped on the cabin side of our little gate. I'll never forget, the closest one was a big raccoon missing one foreleg, who sat upright and growled whenever someone approached the swinging gate. I don't think there were a hundred, but there were dozens. So there we were, tripping on acid, eating rubbery shrimp, and side-eyeing thirty or forty big raccoons who watched us back, quietly waiting for someone to throw them some scraps. For the record, we did not feed them.

Once it got full dark they began dispersing, and by nine or ten o'clock they were gone.