Terry Cowgill

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1. Raccoon Terrorizes Lime Rock Residents [04.27.06]
   By TERRY D. COWGILL

   LIME ROCK — When Rebecca Mahony first heard the hissing and squealing noises the afternoon of April 19, she was puzzled and somewhat alarmed. Even as the owner of two cats, she had never before heard that sound on her White Hollow Road property.

   “I was working in my back yard, raking and planting near the barn,” Mahony recalled.

   She looked up in the mid-afternoon sun and spied a raccoon not 75 feet from her. That was enough to sound alarm bells, as raccoons seen in the daytime are often rabid. This crazed animal, however, was running straight at her.

   “I waved my arms at him and he ran harder at me,” said Mahony.

   As a last resort, Mahony grabbed a large plastic bucket that had contained an apple tree she had recently planted and “clobbered him with it.” The animal was staggered but ran into the barn. Mahony then ran into the front door of her house.

   She called her neighbor, John Belter, but since he did not have an appropriate trap, he suggested she call State Police Troop B in Canaan. She called another neighbor, Lee Collins, who usually takes a walk down White Hollow Road every afternoon. Collins said he would gladly stay put today.

   While Mahony was on the phone with State Police, she heard the hissing and scratching noises again. What she saw surprised her far more than when she was out in her garden only a few moments earlier.

   “I couldn’t believe it,” Mahony said, her voice still reflecting the terrifying moment. “He had ripped open the back door screen and was in the house. He was chasing me around the coffee table.”

   Mahony was also concerned about her two cats, one on the sofa and another on a window seat. But the raccoon did not seem interested in them. He continued to pursue Mahony as she fled out the front door. In desperation, she grabbed another handy gardener’s weapon — a 25-pound bag of fertilizer. The blow knocked the 15-pound raccoon of its feet and he staggered away once again.

   She returned to her house and resumed her conversation with the trooper, who had held on to hear the commotion. The she saw Belter arrive and excused herself from the trooper again.

   “Where is he?” asked Belter, who was packing heat in the form of a shotgun.

   Upon hearing Belter’s urgent inquiry, the crazed animal ran toward him. But Belter was not in a position to take decisive action, as his gun had yet to be loaded. Belter ran in circles trying to evade the raccoon while fishing shotgun shells out of his pocket and loading them into his gun. Finally, he got off three shots and, since the animal appeared to struggle, he fired a fourth.

   Mahony resumed her conversation with police, who told her since no one was bitten by the coon, it was not necessary to send an animal control officer. So she set about burying the beast in a three-foot-deep hole. She had done this a few years earlier to put her late cat to rest, but the feline carcass was dug up by coyotes. This time she covered the raccoon with mothballs before replacing the soil.

   Mahony suspects the raccoon was partially blinded by rabies since it responded more to noise than anything else. She came forward with her story because she wanted others to expect the unexpected.

   “Wild animals are wild animals,” said Mahony. “We need to react appropriately and protect ourselves.”

   Comment by Terry — January 10, 2007 #

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