One fewer raccoon
Interesting weekend. Went up to Mike and Megan's lakehouse up by Carbondale.
The property used to have this giant willow tree growing on it that was so big it was falling over and endangering the house and anyone who walked by, so they cut it down. They left the giant stump, about 5' high and 4' in diameter, which turned out to have a hollow down the middle of it and extending out a knothole in the side.
Various groups of lakehouse-camping folks have repeatedly tried to burn down the stump by piling wood around in in various half-assed fashions, but while some of it was charred the tree still kept trying to grow out the side further from the firepit. On Saturday, we stopped fucking around and got three vanloads full of wood and built a teepee fire around the entire stump. There's this place near them that assembles prefab log cabins, and they've got a standing invite to just grab all the scrap wood they want, so this was all nice and dry and seasoned wood. The teepee itself was built from long bannister segments and deadfall branches. Once it got fully involved, the hollow in the stump acted as a chimney and was like a blowtorch blowing up through the center, you could feel the breeze the fire was drawing in.
At one point, Mike's dog, which was chained up, started going fucking nuts. The collective opinion was that the neighbor's dog, some pit mix who's not particularly friendly, had gotten out of the house, so Mike walked over to check out the situation. Turned out it was a raccoon who had emerged from the dark and was walking towards the dog. Mike thought "Oh, it's just a raccoon," which is better than an unfriendly pit bull, but then realized "Shit, that raccoon's actually coming this way." Dog was scooped up and put in the van, and I handed Mike a length of bannister. Mike tried to scare the raccoon away, poked at it a few times and pounded on the ground, but it started hissing at him and kept walking towards him, so he clubbed it to death.
Wasn't a big raccoon, probably a juvenile. The dog's strong as hell, a char-pei/golden lab mix, and could certainly have taken the thing. It didn't look rabid, there was no foaming or stumbling like in late-stage rabies, and the neighbor said he'd seen the thing running through the yard the past few nights. But raccoons aren't supposed to *do* things like just appear and start going after dogs. I doubt it was hungry, there are probably a dozen houses around that lake and lots of tasty garbage for it to ransack. Maybe it was confused; we were all backlit by an enormous fucking bonfire so we probably looked just like a big mass of shadow flailing about and it might have just been coming over to check things out.
But, anyway, it was dead at the first blow, just a quick squeak and then it was reflex-twitching with a crushed skull, and we had a quick method of disposal. Just picked it up with a shovel and dumped it in the core of the fire were the flames were actually blue/purple. This thing was *hot*; aluminum cans thrown in lasted for a few seconds before they started to melt, broke the oxide layer, and then just burned right up. Glass bottles would start to soften in under a minute and would eventually just puddle. I'd guess this thing was reaching 1300 C. So it seemed a fairly safe way to dispose of a potentially rabid raccoon .
The property used to have this giant willow tree growing on it that was so big it was falling over and endangering the house and anyone who walked by, so they cut it down. They left the giant stump, about 5' high and 4' in diameter, which turned out to have a hollow down the middle of it and extending out a knothole in the side.
Various groups of lakehouse-camping folks have repeatedly tried to burn down the stump by piling wood around in in various half-assed fashions, but while some of it was charred the tree still kept trying to grow out the side further from the firepit. On Saturday, we stopped fucking around and got three vanloads full of wood and built a teepee fire around the entire stump. There's this place near them that assembles prefab log cabins, and they've got a standing invite to just grab all the scrap wood they want, so this was all nice and dry and seasoned wood. The teepee itself was built from long bannister segments and deadfall branches. Once it got fully involved, the hollow in the stump acted as a chimney and was like a blowtorch blowing up through the center, you could feel the breeze the fire was drawing in.
At one point, Mike's dog, which was chained up, started going fucking nuts. The collective opinion was that the neighbor's dog, some pit mix who's not particularly friendly, had gotten out of the house, so Mike walked over to check out the situation. Turned out it was a raccoon who had emerged from the dark and was walking towards the dog. Mike thought "Oh, it's just a raccoon," which is better than an unfriendly pit bull, but then realized "Shit, that raccoon's actually coming this way." Dog was scooped up and put in the van, and I handed Mike a length of bannister. Mike tried to scare the raccoon away, poked at it a few times and pounded on the ground, but it started hissing at him and kept walking towards him, so he clubbed it to death.
Wasn't a big raccoon, probably a juvenile. The dog's strong as hell, a char-pei/golden lab mix, and could certainly have taken the thing. It didn't look rabid, there was no foaming or stumbling like in late-stage rabies, and the neighbor said he'd seen the thing running through the yard the past few nights. But raccoons aren't supposed to *do* things like just appear and start going after dogs. I doubt it was hungry, there are probably a dozen houses around that lake and lots of tasty garbage for it to ransack. Maybe it was confused; we were all backlit by an enormous fucking bonfire so we probably looked just like a big mass of shadow flailing about and it might have just been coming over to check things out.
But, anyway, it was dead at the first blow, just a quick squeak and then it was reflex-twitching with a crushed skull, and we had a quick method of disposal. Just picked it up with a shovel and dumped it in the core of the fire were the flames were actually blue/purple. This thing was *hot*; aluminum cans thrown in lasted for a few seconds before they started to melt, broke the oxide layer, and then just burned right up. Glass bottles would start to soften in under a minute and would eventually just puddle. I'd guess this thing was reaching 1300 C. So it seemed a fairly safe way to dispose of a potentially rabid raccoon .