RACCOONS Critters may be cute, but they also can be dangerous

When dealing with wild animals, it's better to be safe than sorry.
At least once a week since Nov. 1, Poland Township police officers have used their pistols in the line of duty -- to shoot raccoons.
In the city of Hubbard, two raccoons were spotted in one day just last weekend.
Residents call in a report that always sounds about the same: There's a raccoon in my yard. We're worried. Can you send an officer?
Raccoon rabies is a serious problem, and calling the police is exactly the right thing to do, said Bob Hewitt, director of Environmental Health for the Youngstown Health Department. It's impossible to know for sure whether a raccoon is rabid unless it's tested, but it's better to be safe than sorry, he said. Officials suggest calling the nonemergency number, not 911.
Vaccine
Since the mid-1990s, when several rabid raccoons were found in Mahoning County, bait containing rabies vaccine has been dropped in the spring and fall in counties all along the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. A small plastic bag of rabies vaccine is placed into a rectangle of compressed fish meal and fish oil. Raccoons are attracted to the bait, and when they bite into it, their teeth tear the plastic bag containing the vaccine. The vaccine has a sweet taste, and they'll keep licking until they ingest it all, Hewitt said.
The vaccine is dropped by plane into the area, and in Youngstown, it's also delivered by being thrown from a truck over a seven-day period. He noted that when a raccoon is killed by officials, it is almost always tested to see if it's diseased. He said no rabid raccoons have been found in Youngstown since 1999.
Raccoons primarily prowl at night, so many people think that if they see one in the daytime that it's sick. Not so, said Hewitt.
"At night they're looking for food, and if they can't find it at night, they're going to look during the day," he said.
Hewitt said he's not surprised that so many more raccoons are spotted in areas such as Poland than in Youngstown. Poland is a wooded area, more of a natural habitat for raccoons. With increasing development, raccoons and other animals are finding less natural area to hold onto, he said.
There's another reason we're seeing more raccoons, Hewitt said.
Animals such as bobcats, natural predators of raccoons, are no longer around, Hewitt said, so the raccoons are living longer. People rarely eat them anymore, and their fur, once highly prized, isn't a hot commodity these days.
More and more
So, the dwindling popularity factor, combined with natural habitats being torn away with an increase in rural development, means we'll continue to see more and more raccoons, Hewitt said.
"They have nowhere to go," said Linda Davis, a wildlife rehabilitator with Animal Charity in Youngstown. "Our wildlife is being destroyed, which is sad for the wildlife."
People move out to rural areas to be closer to nature, Davis said, but they panic when actually see wildlife.
"People call and they're all upset that they've seen deer or raccoons, and I don't understand. They moved into the animal's habitat. They're the intruders," Davis said.
Jerry Bartko, owner of Wildlife Management Services, has a contract with the city of Hubbard. He's called whenever a raccoon is spotted, and it's his job to remove it.
Bartko, who describes himself as an animal lover, said it's impossible to tell whether many of the raccoons he has to destroy are suffering from rabies or distemper. Either way, the result is the same -- by law, the animal must be destroyed. Both diseases are fatal to raccoons, so killing the animal is simply speeding up an inevitable process. Rabies can be passed to other animals and humans; distemper cannot be passed to humans.
Don't look for raccoons to go away anytime soon, Hewitt said. There are lots of them out there -- no numbers are available -- and education is the best weapon we can use against them.
"They're not all dangerous," Davis said. "Some really aren't sick. But when they're stumbling and walking in a circle, call for help."