Oh the stupidity!

[draggonlaady]

A week-old Pike County, Illinois girl is in the hospital after a pet raccoon attacked her face.

You can read the whole story yourself, but I'd just like to point out that 1: raccoons do not make good pets for the vast majority of people or raccoons, and 2: I don't give a flying bloody fuck through a rolling doughnut how nice your animal of any species is, why the FUCK did you leave it unsupervised with a 4 day old baby? Even a 1/2 pound pet fucking RAT could kill or maim an infant if left alone with it! Babies CANNOT defend themselves. Do not DO THIS very stupid thing!

Raccoon's owners of course say it wasn't vicious. Well, to blatantly steal a line from Scott Weese of Worms and Germs, "wounds caused by accidents heal at the same rates as those caused my malice." Personally, I have a hard time qualifying this as an "accident" since it was absolutely foreseeable and easily avoidable, but whatever.

Sucks for the 'coon that it had to die for the gross negligence and stupidity of this kid's mother and grandparents. Also, I'm not entirely sure about Illinois, but it is illegal to keep wild animals as pets in this state. And the bit about having vaccinated the 'coon for rabies? It's not (in this state, but apparently in California, it IS) illegal to vaccinate "off label" species, but it also provides little or no legal standing, because the vaccine has not been tested or shown to have efficacy in those species. So, as shown in this case, the courts will typically treat a vaccinated exotic as an un-vaccinated animal. Please note that dog/wolf and dog/coyote hybrids count as non-dog species for legal purposes of rabies vaccination, so if you vaccinate a wolf-hybrid you get no legal protection, sorry.

(Also, I found this comment quite amusing and valid: Wounds caused by accidents heal at the same rates as those caused my malice.

Comments

[sphynx-again.livejournal.com]

They recently made it legal in Idaho to keep raccoons. They were reclassed from "fur bearing" to "predatory wildlife" and it's now legal to live-capture and keep them. "The new status will also allow raccoons to be collected live from the wild and kept in captivity if consistent with local government regulations." One of our local vets has one as a pet, and features its photo on her vaccine clinic flyers.

[sphynx-again.livejournal.com]

Oh here, you might be interested in this. Or rather, interested in being annoyed, pissed, frustrated, and frightened by this. As I was.

http://www.palouseads.com/item.aspx?ad=47661

or this

http://www.palouseads.com/item.aspx?ad=47712

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

Monkeys are also illegal in Washington. Wonder if those folks who think their monkeys are so adorable that it needs to be mentioned 3 times in a 4 line advert bother to tell the kids from Pullman that come look at them this little tidbit.

When you get those at the shelter, I do not want them.

[sphynx-again.livejournal.com]

Oh, I look forward to the day some dimwit calls our shelter to get rid of a monkey! I'm a little surprised they aren't illegal in Idaho. And I know for a fact you have to have a special permit to keep big cats in Idaho. Wonder if they bother checking your USDA permit before they sell you one of those adorable cubs?

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

At least that advertiser went to the (admittedly stupidly minimal) effort of putting the word "experienced" in there... the concept of sending large cat cubs to an owner with no training/keeping experience is terrifying. Though obviously, experience doesn't equal intelligence, as broadly shown here: http://www.wormsandgermsblog.com/2011/02/articles/animals/other-animals/tigers-in-the-bedroom/

[sphynx-again.livejournal.com]

I'm just remembering all the times my nice small domestic cats have galloped over my head while I'm sleeping.

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I hate the fact that people are so stupidly blinded to the fact that it doesn't matter if the cat (or horse, or giant breed dog, or whathaveyou) is malicious, they can still kill you.

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

Idaho is stupid. Sorry, but that's just... gah.

[sphynx-again.livejournal.com]

Well, the intent is so that hunters can raise them and train their dogs on them. So yeah. In this case I agree. Idaho is stupid.

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's such a great fucking reason to have a raccoon. Geh.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

raccoons do not make good pets for the vast majority of people or raccoons

Doesn't this generalize to all wild animals?

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yes. People rarely grasp the difference between domesticated and tamed. And thus fail abysmally to understand why it is such a bad idea to trust any tamed/wild animal the way they want to. Hell, half the time you can't trust domesticated animals to act the way you want them to act, and they've been selectively bred to get along with humans for generations.

Which is not to say that I think all wild/exotic animals are bad choices for pets under all circumstances--i have a snake and bruce has a bunch of scorpions--but we certainly don't let them run loose in the house or cuddle with infants! Fuck, I wouldn't even leave my hound dog unsupervised with an infant, and I've had 11 years of training her and learning to trust her. Doesn't make it any less tragic were she to accidentally step on the baby's face and put a nail in its eyeball or something. There is absolutely no excuse for the sort of shit that happened there.