Confessions: Raccoons Scare me to Death

I’m one of those moms I said I’d never be – seeing or reading something that scares me to death and then reacting.

I saw an Animal Planet program last year about a toddler who ingested raccoon roundworm eggs at a playground and almost died as the larva went into his brain, ate through his optical nerves and messed up his development. Then I read this article.

I. Freaked. Out.

We have raccoons running through the backyard all the time. Some of the neighbors feed these vermin so they’ve become rather unafraid of humans.

In this part of the world, close to 100% of all raccoons have roundworms (different from the kind your pets get). A gram of raccoon poo can have 20,000 or more roundworm eggs. If they are accidentally ingested by person or pet, the eggs hatch in the gut, the larvae eat through the intestine, go into the bloodstream and, more often than not, end up in the brain and/or spinal column eating optical nerves (blindness), brain and spinal nerves. The eggs are microscopic, can get airborne, and are extremely hard to kill.

I stopped letting the kids out back, to the playground and the forest. They had to wash their hands even if they had a dirty thought.

I took all the pets to the vet to be dewormed as they can carry the larvae. There is a pill you can give pets just in case.

I also got a slingshot and a BB gun and started shooting at raccoons every time they came into the yard. Sadly, this wasn’t working. They laughed at my aim and the light sting of the ammo. My intention was to protect my kids and animals and discourage the filthy vermin from making my yard a home or latrine.

You see, raccoons make latrines. They poo in the same spot over and over, making a huge pile of stinky, toxic poo with billions and billions of those deadly eggs that can live for years and years and can’t be killed by bleach, pesticides or any other man made substance.

My vet and pediatrician assured me it was very rare to actually ingest these eggs, but I was doing the right thing by making my backyard a hostile environment. There have only been a handful deaths from this parasite since 2003 (all young children, however.) Just keep a lookout for any latrines and everything should be fine. It really was safe to let the kids go outside, they said.

I relented.

Then, last Saturday, during my son’s second birthday party, as no less than seven children and 11 adults wondered around my back yard in the sun, my dad came up to me and casually asked about that pile of elephant poo in my raised vegetable bed (which I’d not planted this year so it was full of weeds).

My heart missed a couple of beats. I asked him to show me.

Sure enough, in the lower area of my yard, right there in the raised bed, a large pile of raccoon poo. I’d just done a sweep of my yard the week before as I was weeding. This was all only a week of poo, but they’d been busy.

Trying to hid my complete and total panic I asked all the parents there to keep the kids out of the lower part of the yard (down a few stairs from the lawn). Dad and Hubby went to work with a plastic bag and shovel. They scooped up all the poo and the dirt under it, put it in a bag and tossed it.

That night I freaked out. What if the raccoon tracked it on the patio? The kids were on their hands and knees with the sidewalk chalk. They were eating snacks outside. One egg on the hand, onto the fish cracker, into the mouth, baby goes to the hospital blind. I was beside myself.

I read up on how to clean up this mess. I learned the only way to kill the blasted eggs was fire. FIRE!

The next day I bought a propane blowtorch.

I also bought 3.5 mm thick black plastic. I discovered the evil animal had returned and pooed again that night in the same spot.

In the pouring rain we went out and bagged up as much surrounding soil as we could. Then I torched the remaining soil, turned it over, torched it again, then did it again. The rain kept me from burning my backyard to hell.

Then I torched the shovel.

There is something very satisfying about fire, I tell you what.

After all that, we covered the two raised beds with the plastic, stapling the plastic to the wood frame. I’ve no plans to plant them this year, so I felt it was best to barrier them completely. It will kill the weeds too. But you can be sure I’ll torch that soil again when the plastic comes off!

Then I torched the shovel again. For good measure. Seriously.

A part of me wants to torch the shed since dad put the shovel in there after scooping up the first large pile. I restrained myself. It wasn’t the plague, after all.

So, yes, I can be one of those moms. It’s a little embarrassing, and Hubby is giving me a lot of crap for it. But I’m feeling a little better now.

I’ve also noticed the raccoons no longer stop to look me over. They take one look and run like mad, probably yelling in raccoon to each other, “Run for your life George, it’s the crazy torch lady!!”

 

Tagged as: Confessions, raccoons