July 20, 2008

racoons

Originally PUBLISHED August 11, 2005

I didn't know until I stared working at the chemical plant just how popular 'coon-hunting is around here. Catfish can attest to this--- one guy we worked with at the Steam Plant had a champion coon-dog and he was paid $1,000 a pop, plus the pick of the litter to BREED that dog. (We told a joke--- on cold nights, Jerome brought the dog inside to sleep in his bed and threw his wife outside to sleep with the other dogs.)

Racoons are smart animals. They'll drown a dog if they can get it into water. They'll push it's head under and hold it there until the dog stops struggling.

Most of the time in the woods, racoons will run up a tree to hide. Those fuckers are better than squirrels at making themselves invisible. If you don't see that bandit face peeking around the trunk to look at you, you'll never even know that they are there.

My problem with them is that they like to raid garbage cans and they carry rabies. I've shot several of them while the bastards CAME AFTER ME when I tried to run them off at night. I NEVER went outside on the mini-farm at night without a shotgun. I never knew what I might find.

I've eaten racoon once in my life. It resembled a big rat, after it was skinned and cooked, and it tasted about like what I imagine rat-meat would be. I didn't want a second helping. I might try it again if I were on the verge of starvation, but no other way.

I read once that you can trap a racoon by carving a hole in a tree and sticking a shiny dime in there where the coon can see it. The coon will reach in to grab the dime (they like shiny objects), then its fist is too big to come back out of the hole. The greedy bastard will hang onto the dime until you walk up and knock its brains out with a club.

I've never SEEN that, but it makes sense to me.

Makes more sense than $10,000 coon dogs and walking the woods at night to hunt those nasty critters.