Post by EmilieMadison on Sept 2, 2014 8:59:30 GMT -5
At about 2am one of our cats started yowling like someone was killing her. I jumped out of bed to check on her- she was sitting on our window sill behind the curtain. I pulled the curtain back and she was still howling and carrying on and I was trying to make sure she wasn't hurt or something.
Dh said, "Is there something out there?" And my first thought was that our bedroom is approx. 3 stories up and what could be out there (on the tiny balconette outside our window). I was kneeling down next to the cat when I actually looked out of the window and there was a young raccoon not 5 inches from my face on the other side of the glass. Staring at me. HOLY SHIT, guys!
It was trying to get the cat to play, tapping on the screen (window was closed, thank god), and then it saw me and was fucking overjoyed with someone new to "play" with. I tried pounding on the glass, making myself look big and scary, flinging the curtains towards it, yelling at it (again through the glass) etc. NOTHING scared this thing and all it wanted to do was follow me from window to window with glee.
DH finally got out of bed and, apparently, he is a lot scarier and the raccoon finally decided it wasn't fun anymore and climbed down. Sorry for the filthy window pic
Our last house had so many racoons, and they weren't scared of me either. I'd see one almost every time I went in the backyard at night, and they would kind of just look back at me. They never tried to play with me, though.
Post by thinkofthesoldiers on Sept 2, 2014 10:27:28 GMT -5
This isn't normal raccoon behavior. Even the young ones aren't generally anxious to be around people. I would maybe consider doing some traps or letting animal control know since they can and often do carry rabies.
This happened to us last week. I heard our cat freaking out and weird thumping. Turns out another cat had got up on our (2nd floor) balcony and they were fighting through our screen door.
This isn't normal raccoon behavior. Even the young ones aren't generally anxious to be around people. I would maybe consider doing some traps or letting animal control know since they can and often do carry rabies.
Huh. This is good to know, because I definitely would have tried to befriend that raccoon and have a new raccoon pet.
This isn't normal raccoon behavior. Even the young ones aren't generally anxious to be around people. I would maybe consider doing some traps or letting animal control know since they can and often do carry rabies.
100% this. They're typically pretty vicious around people and will claw and bite you. They're cute but they're assholes.
Post by EmilieMadison on Sept 2, 2014 10:46:39 GMT -5
Our neighbor has a "have a heart" trap that we can use. I've seen rabid raccoons and this one was more curious than anything. It was very young and we live in the city, so this behaviour isn't "normal" but I dont think it was rabid. Not that I plan to invite it to tea, or anything though. Just in case.
This exact thing happened to me once. We lived in an apartment and the dog was going NUTS at the sliding doors to the balcony. We had just been watching a scary movie and I was all nervous and I opened the curtains, BAM Racoon! Everynight from then on for the rest of the fall he was sitting on the retaining wall in the back yard just staring into our balcony like " Come on Let ME IN!"