Raccoons: Mother Nature’s garbage haulers

My first encounter with raccoons was as a child visiting Dublin Zoo in Ireland where raccoons are exotic and fascinating, as perhaps the hedgehogs that rambled into my parent’s yard might seem in South Burlington. Despite briefly sharing accommodations with an unwelcome raccoon during college, I still find them fascinating.

And so, I welcome the hundreds of raccoon selfies from the trail cameras set by St. Michael’s College students and Vermont Master Naturalists in South Burlington this winter.

Trail cameras produce quite a few fuzzy “what is that thing?” shots along with clearly identifiable mammals. And, occasionally, we find one suitable to grace the pages of The Other Paper.

Raccoons seem to generate large numbers of hairy close encounters with our equipment. They seem to be keenly aware of the cameras and it’s hard to say if subtle sounds or the infrared glow of the nighttime flash tips them off, but they often stare right at the lens, which makes for a nice photograph.

Multiple footprints heading into a culvert from different directions suggested a good camera location near Patchen Road. After a brief search, we located the opposite end of the culvert, but the second opening was partly blocked and lacked footprints, so we settled for a single camera on the active end of the pipe. We drove rebar through the snow and strapped a camera pointing straight down the barrel.

The first raccoon emerged at dusk and spent 11 minutes eyeballing the camera before finally exiting and going about the evening’s business. Subsequent trips past the camera were far briefer, but still with a few hard stares at the novel object infringing on woodland privacy.

At least two raccoons shared the culvert. The second was easily distinguishable by a pair of metal ear tags installed by wildlife biologists. Raccoons are trapped and tagged in Chittenden County by USDA biologists evaluating their rabies vaccination program.

Each August, USDA representatives place tasty baits containing rabies vaccine where small mammals can find them. The program is designed to limit rabies spread in wild populations. Raccoons are trapped, tested, tagged and released as part of this effort.

Some might suggest euthanizing the trapped animals thus eliminating the risk more permanently. But raccoons, like all mammals, produce more offspring than can survive. Eliminating a raccoon makes its resources available to another potentially unvaccinated animal and has little on population size.

Better to have vaccinated, rabies-free raccoons wandering our neighborhoods and, so, USDA releases raccoons where they trap them.

You can contribute to USDA’s efforts to understand and manage rabies risk in our communities by reporting dead, road killed, or euthanized raccoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes and woodchucks (groundhogs) to: (802) 223-8697.

Animals acting strangely, including raccoons active during daylight, should certainly be reported – and never approached.

Raccoons tend to get a bad rap as disease-carrying trash pandas that rip through our garbage bags. But there is value to these animals and many good reasons to keep them around. Firstly, they do indeed eat garbage; they scavenge whatever they can find and there is little they won’t eat.

As true omnivores, they happily chow down on things you or I would find truly objectionable and clean up our landscape in the process.

Secondly, they consume actual pests, including their share of rodents, but they can also make a meal of a wasp nest.

And are they the real culprits scattering your trash? Raccoons can’t easily access typical wheeled trash cans provided by commercial trash haulers.

But, if you have any doubts, perhaps it’s time for a trail camera of your own?

Declan McCabe is a South Burlington resident, naturalist and professor of biology at St. Michael’s College.