Raccoon mercy

Mind the creatures of dusk and dawn when they approach in broad daylight. That's good advice even on the best-manicured street.

Our neighbor in Nashville has a well-treed yard, with one thick-trunked pine soaring 100 feet or more above our hilltop cul-de-sac. All manners of bird fly through the branches. The occasional feral cat skirmish unfolds in his flower beds.

One April morning, the pine tree had an unexpected visitor. Nancy had the pictures to prove his residence, but I didn’t see the neighborhood raccoon. I was little worried. A raccoon in daylight might have grown comfortable stealing food from humans. The more likely scenario is a sick animal.

But I soon saw him enough. Rounding the corner the next afternoon, the raccoon lied prone in the street. I swerved around him and called Nancy to tell her it had fallen from the tried and died.

Then it began moving its head and irregularly licking its face. The dead raccoon had enough life left to draw attention from our neighbors. Fearing a rabid animal, I called animal control. Getting their voicemail, I called 911 and began with a standard, “I’m so sorry for calling but ….”

At this point, the raccoon briefly stood, only to tumble back to the pavement. As bulky as it looked in the tree, it was actually quite scrawny, its impressively fluffed mane obscuring its true size. More attempts ended with the same result.

In minutes, Crosswood Court got two cop cars to cover one raccoon. The caliber of their weapons was too high for a mercy killing, the lead officer told me. If they shot it on the pavement, the bullet could ricochet anywhere in the neighborhood. My phone buzzed. The duty officer at animal control was on his way.

 As I talked to him, another wild creature approached. The backyard gate had popped open and Percy sniffed his way through our neighbor’s garden. I abruptly stopped the conversation to swoop over and ferry Percy back inside. For my troubles, he clawed and bit my arm, drawing blood. Thanks to Percy, I was the only one wounded by any animal that afternoon.

At this point, a newly arrived neighbor tried to intercede. The woman squawked about the need to rehabilitate the raccoon as animal control drove up. She was too busy not facing reality and insisting they should be the ones to handle it.

This animal was not nursing a new wound; it suffered from an advanced disease. Its eyes were milky white. Every move seemed to emanate pain.

When the animal control officer approach, the raccoon burst to life, bearing its teeth in a aggressive pose before staggering away and tumbling into a ditch. I feared he might make it to the drain pipe where one set of neighbors said it resided. In two minutes, the animal control officer wrangled the raccoon with his effective snare. Seconds later, the animal rested in a carrier.

Asked about the likely illness, he told me distemper was rampant at this time of year. Most days, he said, were just a series of calls about disoriented raccoons. Distemper’s symptoms run close to rabies, so it is a common misdiagnosis from amateurs like myself. An animal rehab facility isn’t going to treat late-stage distemper any different than the animal control office.

The animal control officer just did his job in a humane, efficient manner. The raccoon didn’t have to die a slow, withering death on asphalt. . Instead, it got the quiet hum of a dark, cool truck.