As a general rule of thumb, wild animals should be left alone by humans (note to RFK Jr: that still stands even if the animal is no longer alive). They may be cute woodland creatures or majestic beasts, and yes there can be exceptions where a particular critter forms a bond with an individual. But overall our intervening more often than not affects them adversely, if they become too expectant/dependent on humans providing them meals. And, you know, they are still wild, and have the potential to act at any moment with instinctual ferocity. Or you could have this bizarre scenario play out in your front yard: a woman in Washington State has been feeding neighborhood raccoons for 35 years. It was a manageable task for her, akin to leaving food out for stray cats. Until last week, when she called the police because 100 raccoons had shown up on her property. Even the police were startled upon arriving on the scene, though thankfully for us, they captured excellent video and photography to share with the world.
According to NBC News, the woman — who has not been named — was forced to call the police after her yard was swarmed by about 100 raccoons.
Per the outlet, police told NBC affiliate KUSA on Monday, Oct. 7 that the woman from Poulsbo, Wash. began feeding local raccoons 35 years ago, but had never experienced any issues until recently.
“Somehow the word got out in raccoon land and they all showed up to her house expecting a meal,” said Kitsap County Sheriff spokesperson Kevin McCarty.
On Thursday, Oct. 3 the woman called 911 after the animals prevented her from entering her home.
McCarty said that police “were shocked” by the site.
“They had never seen that many raccoons in one place,” the spokesperson said. “Nobody ever remembers being surrounded by a swarm of raccoons. This was a first.”
On Monday, the Kitsap County Sheriff shared a video on X (formerly known as Twitter) featuring the brace of raccoons waiting to be fed.
“On Patrol: Raccoon Invasion,” the police department’s caption read.
In the video, a large group of raccoons can be seen in a woodland area.
Per the report in the video, the woman had to escape the creatures by running away in her car.
The woman said that the sudden increase in raccoons happened “six weeks ago,” adding that the animals surround her during the day and at night for food.
According to the report, she’s albo been quoted prices as high as $500 per raccoon for the entrapment and relocation of the animals.
The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife has been contacted by deputies to help find a solution for the raccoons.
Well, for anyone who’s ever wondered, “What would Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ be like with raccoons instead?” — this is your preview! I’m fairly confident that the only person who is surprised that a sh-t ton of raccoons finally descended to demand more food… is the woman who’s been giving them food for 35 years. In the video clip, you hear a police officer asking when their numbers started blowing up, and she replies, “Six weeks ago!” But she says it with such indignation! I had to chuckle, even though I would be freaked the f–k out if 100 raccoons showed up at my home (who am I kidding, I live in NYC, there are probably twice that many working the trash cans at night). But the difference is that I wouldn’t be feeding those rascals in the first place!
So how does everyone move forward from this stalemate in Kitsap County, Washington? Mathing it out, $500/raccoon X 100 raccoons = a full college tuition (one year or the whole degree, depending on the school). I can understand the homeowner feeling scared and despondent with those numbers. On the other hand, the raccoons are clearly just coming to collect on the social contract that she initiated. I mean sure, it’s a little dramatic of them to wait it out a few decades, build out their families, and then randomly appear en masse to take charge of the situation. But just look at their fanciful tails and high-contrast eye makeup — of course they’re going to be drama queens! Anyway, best of luck to all involved in the future peace negotiations (and fingers crossed that doesn’t include raccoon-genocide advocate Ana Navarro).
Photos credit Ennif Pendahl on Pexels and Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department via Instagram/Facebook
When I first saw the title I cracked up and thought “fucking dumb ass!” But honestly if she didn’t have a problem for 35 years what the hell triggered it? I hope they figure it out. 😂 Raccoons have thumbs. They are bound to try to take over the world.
My first thought, climate change! Semi-seriously, it’s going to affect the planet in ways we don’t even know. Next thought was, what’s happening to raccoon predators? I looked those up, it’s your big cats & dogs, cougars, bobcats, coyotes, and so on. Maybe something’s happening with those populations? Mostly though, it’s the dumb behavior of the human being. It’s against the law to feed wildlife in Oregon, but not Washington. This is the result.
Rodenticides kill predators like Coyotes and Bobcats.
Fox, Bird of Prey and Coyotes are constantly being brought into a local rehabber I follow. The mice eat the poison, the predators eat the mice. And they die slowly.(unless they get treatment)
i googled what Raccoons eat and they do eat mice too. But maybe in this area the other predators are eating the bulk of the mice, lowering the number of predators for Raccoons. Allowing those masked rascals to thrive and grow in number?
LOL Seriously.
This truly felt to me like in high school, when you’d invite people over for “a small gathering of friends” and then some a-hole found out and invited his buddies over for a rager and the house got wrecked and your mom’s favorite necklace was seen on the most popular cheerleader the next week. Some jerk raccoon found out and blabbed.
+++ Perfection. Raccoons are fans of every teenage movies party gone wrong. Sixteen Candles = 100 raccoons showing up. fyi, I shared your post with my husband. He laughed hard and still wants to know which raccoon blabbed in 1980 when he had a small gathering that ended up huge. And, a piece of his Mom’s china was broken. They tried mending hit. It was one of the first things she noticed when his parents came home from a trip.
Correction: Sixten Candles & Risky Business = 100 raccoons showing up.
1. Don’t feed wild animals!
Admittedly, this is surreal and kind of cute. But raccoons can carry rabies, and they can get aggressive, and they have sharp claws and teeth! I can’t believe her neighbors were chill with this.
2. She actually put up with this for six weeks (after over three decades of not seeing the problem)? Six weeks before calling for help? Yikes!
Imagine being her neighbor. It’s not like raccoons respect property lines…little burglar-looking predators.
I had an elderly neighbor who just moved away who has been feeding the squirrels and feral cats in my very much middle of Los Angeles neighborhood since the 1950s. To say the effect has been catastrophic on not only our neighborhood, but the surrounding ones, would be a major understatement.
I really liked this woman, never said anything to her about it because it was obvious she wasn’t going to stop, so why bother, but the trickle down is so enormous, people really need to think before they start feeding wild animals.
Just for one example, her putting out food four times a day has caused the LA bird population to descend like locusts, cashing in on anything the squirrels and cats leave behind. She moved away almost a year ago now, and you can still track which house was Patient Zero by the amount of bird shit on the house, sidewalk, cars that dare park in front of it, etc. She’s been gone for a year, and they are still showing up looking for a meal.
I find raccoons quite cute and funny to watch whenever I see them being shared by all these video/gif aggregator accounts on Twitter.
But they are predators, and people should know that. It seems though that this woman still didn’t wise up when the numbers of raccoons wanting food grew a few weeks ago until just now. I hope her behavior and the raccoon invasion act as a warning to others.
Raccoons and raccoon dogs are invasive species here in Europe, because (rich) people thought it would be interesting to have them live on their estates, grey squirrels too. Of course they escaped, didn’t encounter any natural enemies — and here we are, with massive problems to our native bird/small mammal species. The red squirrels are even endangered now in some areas.
We recently had a raccoon show up here in Hawaii. Our wildlife people set up cameras & a trap & finally…’dispatched’ it. It was doing as you said, eating the eggs of our endangered bird species.
“high contrast eye make up” 🤣🤣🤣
Oh dear. I’ve got that Pedro Pedro Pedro reel in my head again.
Good lort. I did not have this on my 2024 bingo card. We really live in strange times.
I mean what did she expect? The raccoon free food notification system is strong! Has she ever had teenage boys? Voracious appetites, feed one and then all their friends come over – this was to be expected. lol
Dang, where we live, my neighbor humane traps the raccoons and drives them to the state park. He even started spray painting a different color on each ones butt because he thought they were coming back. And he was right! So he took them farther out, which is why he now goes to the state park.
Yep. We had to relocate a few last year that we’re becoming real pests. One climbed into the open window of my son’s truck to get at a bag of fries. It stepped on the garage door opener that he had left on the seat, and we woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the garage door opening! Freaked me out! We saw what happened on security camera. The advice we got was 20 miles. TWENTY MILES AWAY or they can find their way back!
She would have been cured of that pretty quick if she came here and fed baboons.
She wouldn’t get a chance to be indignant.
Yah leave wild animals alone and go help out the SPCA
Hehe I believe you! Once some friends and I had to sleep under the stars in mountains in southern Africa and omg! Baboons are cute when you’re on safari but I leaned they can be super scary when you’re on foot. They didn’t do anything to us, but the ferocious growling kept me awake all night 😳
It’s not just the rabies, it’s the roundworm. I wouldn’t want all that raccoon poop on my property. Just a big nope all around.
Came here to say the same. It is so much work to get them to stop using your yard as a latrine and exposing you, your kids, and your animals to round worm
On another note, maybe JD Vance could get some tips from these furry little creatures on how to properly apply eye makeup.
You win today! That is the best suggestion ever.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Play stupid games…
Yes to all of the comments above, unless you are part of an proper organisation you need to stay away from wild animals and not interfere with them. For their benefit and yours. Maybe one of the reasons the raccoon population is so large is due to the handy source of food?
^ Yup!
It’s her. Hi!
She’s the problem.
It’s her.
I used to watch North Woods Law (a reality show about conservation & wildlife officers in NH and Maine) wildlife. And every season they’d get called out by someone who was all “I’m scared! Bears are on my back deck!” And they’d come out and sure enough the person had been feeding the bears for months or years. Usually some officers had been out there multiple times before, because neighbors had called about the bear feeding, and they’d told the person to knock it off … because this is exactly what happens when you feed bears or raccoons or pretty much any wildlife. And the dumb asses just did’t listen.
And it’s dangerous for people AND the wildlife. It spreads disease by gathering so many individuals in one place, puts people at risk of being attacked and if there’s a threat to people, the ‘nuisance’ animal(s) can wind up being killed. All because someone decided to feed the furry creatures.
I watched a presentation at work about people inadvertently feeding bears & then developing a ‘bear in my backyard’ problem because they just didn’t think. They’ll plant wineries in bear country, put out bird feeders in bear country, put out dogfood for Fido in bear country, & so on.
Okay this lady is in my county and honestly Kitsap County is filed with people like her. One time there was a guy walking along Highway 3 dragging a dead raccoon and telling everyone it was his pet! Honestly, my county is hilarious. Poulsbo, they do have a great bakery though, it’s called Sluys!!!
Hahah I was coming to comment the same thing. This happening in Kitsap county didn’t surprise me at all. Used to live in Bremerton and saw some interesting things.
I’ve probably been to Sluys! I’ve got a friend who lives in Kitsap County. She’s got a bear den in her backyard. They’re mindful that it’s there & so far so good,
My family has a vacation house in Poulsbo and I notice she didn’t call Poulsbo’s PD—she called the county sheriff. So I’m assuming she’s living in the more forested/rural areas surrounding the town, which imo means she’s DAMN lucky she didn’t attract bears, too. Even in town, I occasionally see bear sighting notices in parks!
I just read an article where the same thing happened to a lady but with ducks lmao. Strange times indeed.
Yikes! Raccoons are kind of cute and amusing but no way would I feed them intentionally! They used to break into our trash cans and cause havoc. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if I’d made it easier on them by leaving stuff out in the open. And they really are brazen: when you catch them they just stand stand there with their bandit eyes like “WTF are you looking at?!” They do NOT care.
Bungee cords on the tops of the cans finally did the trick.
Yep. Bungee cords with bricks on top of the trash cans underneath the bungee cords. Not feeding them is the ultimate keep away game(for this lady at least). They look so innocent and cute. Crafty manipulators.
Well I guess they communicate about where to find food, eh? It’s like a forest flash mob. I must say they adorable. I’m old enough to remember the Little House on the Prairie episode with Laura and the raccoon and their dog. It stuck.
It’s like that lady who was feeding bears and refused to stop even after the bears started attacking people. Like leave wild animals alone.
It cost me $350 to get one out of my attic a few years ago😫
Friends of mine had a raccoon mama & her kits under their house; they are noisy & screechy & they just couldn’t take it any more. He set up a sound system to blast them out with really loud rock n roll. Did the trick!
“What would Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ be like with raccoons instead?” I ask myself this every day. 😄
That is a real horror story. They have thumbs, they can open things. There’s no stopping them.
This whole scene is about an hour from me, being Seattle (if the Bainbridge ferry runs on time).
Every time I see this picture, I crack up!!! Such joy, these raccoons!
The key fact here: this lady had been feeding raccoons! for years? Of course the raccoons are gonna tell their raccoon friends about free food, and they’re gonna use their creepy raccoon hands to eat the food, then hang out in the sun-we’ve had a nice fall!-with their raccoon buddies.
Even though I’m paying for it, I’m glad Washington Fish and Wildlife are involved because they can break up the party-which makes me sad, in a way-and capture and place the formerly festive raccoons in a safe manner.
Feed raccoons at your peril!
Before this year, in all my decades, I’ve never seen more than 5 raccoons together, and even that was rare. But twice this year, I’ve seen packs of 20 or more crossing the road and thought WTF?
Same! Been living in my house for almost a decade, and the camera used to pick up one raccoon, a few times a year TOPS.
Inexplicably this year a pack of 4+ roam onto my yard almost every night. Shoot- one afternoon I was sitting on the back deck watching a doe with her fawns, and a lone raccoon casually strolled out from underneath, and stopped and stared at me for a good minute or two.
It’s like neither of us knew what to do lol
They’re really cute but trash pandas are really mean. I live in Brooklyn and was horrified to find two in my yard once. I wouldn’t feed them, they bring their friends…..
How did it take 35 years for it to go nuts? I’d guess 10-15 for enough breeding cycles to get this bad.
My landlady made a “compost pile” which she filled with scraps. She never took care of it. She set bowls in the backyard for feral cats and birds. I was in the backyard one night. Four raccoons climbed over the fence. One of them was huge. It scared the hell out of me. It’s also inhumane because Animal Control might have to put them down.