Ghostman
Ambassador of the SuperNatural
We had a couple days of absolute depression at our apartment this past weekend. We have a creek that runs directly behind our apartment complex which provides a lot of relaxation and cool wildlife experiences. We spent this past spring and summer watching a family of Stellar Jays grow up, learn to fly and finally vanish. The fish hatchery is directly across the creek so this time of year we start to see the salmon run.
Last Friday afternoon, I was sitting on my couch and something caught the corner of my eye. A medium sized raccoon was in the stream walking around. I've had a family of raccoons in the tree right off my deck and have some killer photos. Very cute little buggers when they aren't destroying garbage cans and when I was growing up, our chicken coups.
Anyways, after a few minutes I noticed that the raccoon was just spinning in circles. Not going anywhere, not looking for anything, just slowly spinning like a dog looking to lie down. The wife and I did some quick online research and found out it's a common characteristic of them having Distemper or Rabies. I grabbed my camera to see if I could get some pictures or footage of the little guy and go talk to the Hatchery to let them know and see if someone could call Fish & Game to capture and put him out.
They knew about the raccoon and basically said there was nothing they could do about it. I tried to call the state FWP but they were closed and also, the Hatchery is Federal so they wouldn't do anything either.
So we spent most of the day Friday watching this guy spin in circles and in some instances, watch his tired body slowly slump into the water. He would fall down from exhaustion and then the water would wake him up and he would begin his road to nowhere again for a few more hours. This ran through until Saturday afternoon when he finally disappeared. No idea where he went, but I suspect that he finally succumbed to exhaustion, fell into the water, drowned and floated down stream.
Pretty damn depressing to have to watch that. No matter what we tried, we just couldn't ignore the guy. I have a bunch of pictures of him but I can't bring myself to edit them.
Last Friday afternoon, I was sitting on my couch and something caught the corner of my eye. A medium sized raccoon was in the stream walking around. I've had a family of raccoons in the tree right off my deck and have some killer photos. Very cute little buggers when they aren't destroying garbage cans and when I was growing up, our chicken coups.
Anyways, after a few minutes I noticed that the raccoon was just spinning in circles. Not going anywhere, not looking for anything, just slowly spinning like a dog looking to lie down. The wife and I did some quick online research and found out it's a common characteristic of them having Distemper or Rabies. I grabbed my camera to see if I could get some pictures or footage of the little guy and go talk to the Hatchery to let them know and see if someone could call Fish & Game to capture and put him out.
They knew about the raccoon and basically said there was nothing they could do about it. I tried to call the state FWP but they were closed and also, the Hatchery is Federal so they wouldn't do anything either.
So we spent most of the day Friday watching this guy spin in circles and in some instances, watch his tired body slowly slump into the water. He would fall down from exhaustion and then the water would wake him up and he would begin his road to nowhere again for a few more hours. This ran through until Saturday afternoon when he finally disappeared. No idea where he went, but I suspect that he finally succumbed to exhaustion, fell into the water, drowned and floated down stream.
Pretty damn depressing to have to watch that. No matter what we tried, we just couldn't ignore the guy. I have a bunch of pictures of him but I can't bring myself to edit them.
