Resident Evil: Raccoon City

Many people think raccoons are so sweet and cuddly. They think they might be little mischievous, but harmless. Let me tell you about a little run-in I had with a raccoon a little while ago and it might change your mind... or it might change your opinion of me. Either way, something's gonna change.

Several months ago I was relaxing with my family on a Saturday morning. We were watching cartoons and eating some cereal and enjoying our weekend. All of a sudden I hear my dogs barking outside. Not the normal bark that signifies playing. This was "I need to wrap my jaws around that thing" kind of bark. I open our front door and I see my dogs attacking the fence in my side yard which wrapped around to the front of my house. My dogs are big enough that I actually thought they might break my chain link fence down. I glanced over my front railing to see what they were barking at and I saw a very large raccoon. It looked really scared and was cowering in the corner between my concrete foundation and concrete front steps. I quickly went to the back door and brought my dogs inside. I gave them a quick "once-over" to make sure they hadn't tangled with the raccoon. There were no obvious injuries so I closed the back door and went back around to the front to see if the raccoon had decided to continue in his mischievous adventures. He hadn't. He was still standing there breathing really heavily. He was also bleeding, but I couldn't tell where he was bleeding from.

I went back into my house and grabbed half of my cinnamon raisin bagel that I prepared with the perfect amount of cream cheese. I wasn't excited about sharing, but figured the raccoon could eat my bagel and then be on his way once he had his energy back. My boys were both begging me to let them go outside to play with the raccoon. I gritted my teeth and tossed the portion of bagel onto the ground approximately 6 inches in front of Mr. Raccoon. He didn't immediately jump for it so I thought maybe he was still trying to catch his breath. I closed the front door and started trying to figure out how he had been injured. We lived on a fairly busy road so it was possible he had been hit by a car and managed to mischievously find his way to my front porch, tipping over garbage cans on his way. It was also possible that a different neighborhood dog had gotten a hold of him. We shared a property line with several other large lots with dogs roaming on them.

After about 20 minutes I opened the door and noticed my bagel was still untouched and the raccoon hadn't budged. I had to lean over my railing to see the raccoon and he never once looked up to see who was making all of the commotion above him. On top of all this, my kids were still wanting to go out and play. I didn't feel comfortable with my kids playing so close to a mischievously injured and unpredictable, bloody raccoon.

I called Animal Control to let them know about our situation. Animal Control informed me that they do not respond to calls involving raccoons. They said something about how they weren't domesticated animals and therefore weren't equipped to deal with them... whatever the crud that means. They DID give me the phone number to the Division of Wildlife something or other. So I called them... but got their answering machine. Apparently they think that all miscellaneous wildlife residing in Utah hibernate every weekend, all year long and so they don't find it necessary to work on the Sabbath or the special day before when we all get ready for Sunday.

So at this point I start wondering what my options were. I have a gun, but I live within city limits and it would be illegal to discharge my firearm. Plus the raccoon was really close to my house and I wasn't excited about shooting toward my own home. I remembered that I had a large dog kennel, but was trying to picture myself attempting to coax a large, evil, wild raccoon into the medium-sized enclosure. It wasn't gonna happen.

I walked back into the front yard to see if maybe I could scare it away... without getting too close, of course. I got to the bottom of my steps and turned to look at the raccoon. For the first time the raccoon looked up at me and made eye contact. I had closed my front door behind me, but I heard it open as I was staring at this raccoon. I noticed it was bleeding from one of it's ears. It bared it's teeth at me and made a really odd gurgling sound. It looked like it might actually jump or at least try to jump toward me. I looked up and saw my boys standing in the doorway beginning to walk toward the railing to see the adorable mischievous raccoon. I instructed them rather harshly to get their skinny butts back inside and watch The Wiggles. They begrudgingly complied and I shifted my attention back to Mr. Raccoon who was still baring his teeth, but was swaying from side-to-side and slightly counter-clockwise like he'd had a few too many to drink. This creeped me out more than raccoon blood oozing out of his ears. I decided I needed to do something.

I went back in the house and told Betsy to take our kids into the back bedroom to finish watching the Wiggles and the pit stains that grow slowly during every song. She asked me what I was going to do and I told her I was going to kill the raccoon before it hurt anyone or any neighborhood dog.


I walked out to my garage and grabbed the only thing I thought would do the trick quickly and effectively. Our garden shovel. I walked back into the front yard and stood about 10 feet in front of the raccoon for several minutes trying to decide if I had it in me. The only animal I've ever purposely killed in my life up until then was bees, worms, ants, and other random insects. I was moving pretty quickly it seemed. I mean, there was no natural progression from insects to hamsters to frogs to kittens to rabbits, THEN to dog-sized raccoons.

I also studied the shovel quite a bit. I decided to use the back of the shovel and hit the raccoon as hard as I possibly could on the top of his head. I felt like one hit should do it if I could hit him just right. I don't have the best depth perception so I actually started thinking, "What if I swing too long and the shovel skips off the house or stairs? That would slow my swing down enough where it might just piss this thing off." Then I thought, "What if I swing too short and end up breaking the raccoons nose off? Then he'll really want to scratch me up with those razor sharp mischievous claws."


Meanwhile this raccoon is staring at me, gurgling, showing me his bloody sharp teeth and swaying all over the place. I decided if I was going to do it, I needed to do it right then. So I whipped the shovel around my back, brought it above my head, and swung it down as hard as I possibly could.

I was a perfect hit. If I played baseball, it would have totally been a home run. And the raccoon didn't even seem to see it coming. He was too distracted bleeding and thinking about what other mischievous acts he could get up to in the afterlife, he didn't even notice my shovel.

The sound it made was slightly higher pitched than I would have imagined. It was the sound of steel hitting furred skull that I couldn't get out of my head for about 3 days (that's how I know I could never be serial killer). After I hit him, he dropped just like I expected him to, but I swear he looked like he was trying to get up and kill me. I swung the shovel about 5 more times in a panic, thinking he was going to find his way up my pant leg like a squirrel and reek havoc in my crotch. After the 5th swing, he was still convulsing and a thought popped into my head. It was "Flip the shovel around and lop off his head like they do in all those zombie movies." So that's what I tried to do. It seems, however, that eating garbage gives raccoons unnaturally tough skin and fur. It was either that, or maybe that 130 pounds behind a shovel just doesn't cut it (pun intended).

So finally, the raccoon stopped moving, but he wasn't fooling anybody. It took me a really long time to build up the courage to shovel this raccoon into a garbage bag and put him in the can. I kept thinking maybe he wasn't dead and was gonna jerk his head up, bare his bloody teeth at me and gargle the words, "That hurt, what you did to me with that shovel".

He didn't though. He was dead. I'm sure he's still dead unless someone buried him in that Pet Semetary.