Be honest, have you vaccinated your ferret? Don’t try and pass him off as a weasel or European Polecat or even a Steppe Polecat.  New York State law requires people to have all dogs, cats and domesticated ferrets immunized for rabies beginning at four months of age.

Just because your ferret destroyed the inside of your home doesn’t give you the right to claim he has no manners and therefore is similar to your husband; not domesticated. Pets that received their first vaccination have to be re-vaccinated within one year in order to qualify for a three year coverage. By the way historians claim that ferrets have been domesticated for about 2,500 years. Husbands? More research is required.

It’s rare for humans to get rabies but for people who have not been vaccinated, rabies can be deadly after neurological systems occur, but quick use of a post rabies exposure vaccination may stop the virus from further progression.

Since the 1970’s the northeast and mid-Atlantic portions of the country have occasionally been dealing with raccoons infested with rabies. Apparently the rabid raccoons had been transported from the southeast portion of the nation by hunters who desired to increase the raccoon population of the northeast. If you need wildlife control call a professional.

People all over the country have to deal with pesky raccoons, even city dwellers. Raccoons enjoy residing in the underground sewer system and other locations. Unfortunately, raccoons sometimes have rabies. Rabid raccoons tend to initiate brawls with other animals. If you see one attacking a stout Grizzly bear he may have rabies or he may just have a massive ego.

If you live in an area where raccoons wander around it’s a good idea to vaccinate your pets against the disease. Rabies can kill. The variety of rabies that inhabit raccoons is a serous public health problem since it can be passed on to other animals.

The virus is contained in the critters’ saliva and is passed to their victims by bites and scratches. If you live in a community that features raccoons you might want to check with the appropriate public officials and inquire if they are willing to use baits that include a vaccine that when consumed by raccoons  protects the varmints from rabies. The bait is being utilized in various parts of the country. If  your community selects the right type of bait it will not harm dogs if they happen to eat a few for a snack. If you notice a rabid animal, immediately contact your government officials. 

A lot of people use pesticides around their house for a variety of purposes.  Pesticides include products such as mold and mildew cleaners, weed killers and chemicals utilized for pools.  Sometimes serious blunders occur which have serious consequences.

A woman placed some grainy pesticides into some meat balls. Her goal was to entice the raccoons that were giving her problems to gobble up the chemicals. The suspicious raccoons refused to eat the treats. She placed the meat balls in the freezer and the unsuspecting husband  had them for a meal. Fortunately, the hospital staff was able to save him. Perhaps it’s best to let professionals handle raccoons in an appropriate manner.

A man placed bug bombs on top of his gas stove. The aerosol was ignited by the stove’s pilot light. The man was surprised when he noticed blown out windows , walls pushed out of position and serious roof damage. It’s very important  to turn off  all ignition sources before using bug bombs. 

According to my abacus the man would have be in a significantly better financial situation  if he had obtained the services of a professional exterminator. When his wife came home he sighed and  said to his wife “Oops, would you like a Pepsi?” Well, I’m joking. Be safe and consider using professionals.

Recently a motorist in my neighborhood saw a raccoon standing in the roadway, foaming at the mouth and growling at cars. Raccoons are know carriers of rabies so the man called police, who referred him to animal control, who passed him to public health, who sent him to natural resources, which told him, “Shoot it if it’s on your property.”

Seems like you’re on your own if you see a rabid raccoon in your neighborhood. Shooting a dangerous animal might make sense in the wilds of Wyoming, but in my crowded city neighborhood, it’s not smart, safe or legal. Police deal with wild people, not animals. Animal control focuses on cats and dogs and isn’t equipped to handle wildlife. Local wildlife centers will tell you how to capture a wounded animal so you can bring it in for treatment. This is great for baby birds, but I wouldn’t want to get that close to a sick raccoon.

Raccoons are known carriers of rabies and canine distemper. Rabies can be passed to humans and other animals. Distemper is not contagious to humans but can be transmitted to other animals.

If you come across a rabid, sick or wounded raccoon or other wild animal, it’s best to call an animal control company immediately. Wild animals are unpredictable and dangerous. Don’t put your family, children or pets at risk, call Stern Environmental.

She’s back! We have a neighborhood raccoon who specializes in finding “inconvenient” living quarters. The past few years she’s favored my neighbors’ hollow porch columns, nesting there and raising several broods. For most of the spring she perches on top of the columns, giving my neighbors the evil eye and hissing at them as they enter and exit their home. She’s just protecting her babies (who you can hear crying through the brick walls of the column), but it’s still annoying — and potentially dangerous. Raccoons carry rabies and have been known to charge humans who come too close to their nest.

She spent a winter in my chimney before I had it cleaned and capped. She dug out a burrow under another neighbor’s storage shed and terrorized her inquisitive cat. And now she’s moved into my garage. I don’t go into my garage very often in the winter. It’s an old style barn-door building of questionable structural integrity, but it makes a handy place to store my gardening tools, the bikes and assorted bits of odd lumber. Unsuspecting, I walked into its dark recesses yesterday to fill the bird feeders. From the dim recesses at the back of the garage, I heard a sharp hiss. Then I saw two eyes glowing in the dark. She’s back!

There’s little in the do-it-yourself line you can do that effectively gets rid of raccoons. They’re not easily intimidated by humans. I’ve tried ammonia, mothballs (I can still smell the stink in my attic), ultrasonic gizmos, even a radio blaring Nine Inch Nails. I’ll admit that did get that particular raccoon to leave for awhile, but she came back. I think after a few days, the music kind of grew on her. I thought about trying some of the predator urine sprays you can buy, but after one whiff I decided living with a raccoon might not be so bad.

Raccoons are destructive and leave all kinds of nasty creepy crawlies in their nesting areas. They have a pungent odor you’ll never get out of the floor boards. They’re a critter you don’t want to mess with. If you’re unfortunate enough to be selected as a raccoon’s new home, give Stern a call and let the experts move your “guest” along. Try to do it before she has her litter. Squalling raccoon babies are a sound worse than nails on a chalkboard!

You know what’s the worst? Going to bed and dreaming sweet dreams of your lovely home, but being woken up at about three A.M. to the unmistakable sound of something getting into your garbage. It’s an awful feeling. You know who the culprit is; the sneeky raccoon. That little fella has been throwing your garbage all over your lawn since you moved in, and quite frankly, you’re fed up with it. Come on, how many times have you been sleeping and you were shaken awake by the sound of what seemed like a rock climbing through your garbage cans? How many mornings have you gone out in your bath robe to pick up mold covered bread and other filthy articles of trash? How many raccoons have you seen smiling at you while you do this back-breaking labor? Well, maybe not that extreme, but it could happen. The point is that enough is enough!

Do you usually keep your garbage cans outside? If there is some way to bring them into a closed area inside, then the raccoons won’t have easy access to it. As well, do you have lids on your trash cans? Make sure they are fastened tightly on, and if you could get a trash can with a locking lid, that would be choice. You probably also have pets that you don’t really want to let out all the time, so you installed a pet door for them. This is a great way for raccoons to get into your house and eat your food, or go into your pantry. If you can’t possibly live without the pet door, get one that you can lock eventually, maybe at night time when the pets are inside.

It’s not hard to get rid of raccoons. You just have to manage your trash and lock up your house. Raccoons are like any other pest; don’t give them any reason to hang around, and they won’t. Do everything to keep them out, and you’ll notice that you are the one smiling, not them.

Most people associate raccoons with hillbillies or life in the country. Few people realize that, like the coyote, raccoons are becoming a more and more common suburban and even urban dwellers. This is because raccoons are amazingly adaptable to their surroundings and, like people, eat just about anything.

With the rise of expanded suburban living, leash laws, and urban sprawl, raccoons and some of their other forest friends, like opossums and skunks, are rapidly becoming part of the urban and suburban landscape.

Although they are cute and it can be fun to watch their antics on nature shows on the Discovery Channel, raccoons are classified as a pest species because of their habit of taking up residence in human dwellings. It is not that they are not cute, rather raccoons, like squirrels, tend to damage and soil the houses they invade and make into their homes. They also are a nuisance in terms of getting into garbage which can then attract other pests, like rats. Raccoons can, on occasion, also carry rabies.

Regardless of their cuteness or the warm, fuzzy feelings you might have toward these very charismatic, furry creatures, they are still wild animals with sharp teeth that they are not afraid to use if need be. Always be careful if you spot one, and don’t be lured into getting too close by those TV programs that show how funny and nice they are.

If you find raccoons frequenting your yard or in your house, call a professional to remove it before something bad has a chance to happen to your home, pet, or family.

As soon as people find out they have a raccoon in their attic, the first thing they think about is whether they can get rid of it themselves. So, they go surf the Internet to see what other people are doing.

Out on the web are a lot of sites that have all kinds of “home remedies” or do-it-yourself solutions. These can range from coyote urine to ultrasonic emitters, to loud rock music and bright lights. Unfortunately, raccoons are highly adaptable, like suburban and urban life, are clever and relatively fearless creatures, and are not deterred by small inconveniences.

Some of these chemical repellents are basically composed of mothballs (i.e., naphthalene) or ammonia. These chemicals are very stinky and give off a smell that will permeate your house with an odor that is nearly impossible to get rid of until it dissipates on its own six or more months away. Truth be told, hey don’t really seem to effect raccoons much.

Predator urine that you can spray or apply to entrance areas is sometimes touted as the be-all and end-all of keeping raccoons or other varmints out of your attic or eaves. Although these might be great for generating revenue for the seller, they are marginally to not effective at all.

A similar story holds for the ultrasonic devices you can see being sold as repellents. Raccoons and other mammal invaders into your house are generally not affected by lights or a radio playing up in the attic. Only if you are personally up there, will they tend to vacate. As soon as you leave, though, they will return to house and home.

Rabies is regarded by most of us as a very scary disease that makes you crazy, makes you foam at the mouth, and then kills you. Raccoons have a bad reputation for being carriers of rabies. Although there is no doubt that raccoons, like people, can get rabies, they are not necessarily more susceptible to it than your dog. If a raccoon, or any animal for that matter get rabies (except humans that can receive shots to prevent the disease from taking its ultimate course) it will die.

Rabies is a virus. It can only be transferred from one mammal to another during a very short contagious stage when the animal is close to death. You can detect an animal with rabies if you see it acting very aggressively for no reason, acting confused and walking in circles, possibly dragging its legs partially paralyzed, or foaming at the mouth. It is in the animal’s saliva by which rabies is most frequently transferred.

Just because you see a raccoon walking around in the daytime does not mean it is rabid, unless it is showing these other symptoms. It is probably just hungry or can’t sleep. If an animal looks and is acting healthy, then it probably is.

In terms of being able to get rabies from a raccoon, that is pretty rare and there have been only less than a handful of reported cases in which raccoons have given rabies to humans. Rabies is most often reported in raccoons, as opposed to skunks, foxes, groundhogs, and bats which also are susceptible, because raccoons are more likely to live close to humans. So we tend to see them more than other wild animals. Squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats, and rabbits can sometimes get rabies, but this is not very common and there are no reported cases where these animals have transmitted the disease to humans.

Each pest has its own list of problems it causes. The most common complaint about raccoons is that they have no compunctions about tearing a hole in your roof to make an entrance to their new den. They can also rip up duct work, tear insulation off pipes, pull up insulation, and might even chew on your joists, though they are not as bad as squirrels in this regard.

Although damage to the frame of your house is annoying, for the most part raccoon structural damage is relatively minor. The real problem with raccoons is that they are a big animal; and, if they are living in your house, just like you they are going to be “going to the bathroom” in there. The only problem is they don’t have a bathroom in the attic and don’t know how to use one anyway. As a result, they will be urinating and defecating in your attic as long as they are living in there. This can cause health problems for your and your family and pets.

Because raccoons are basically wild animals their feces can contain parasites, a common one of which is the raccoon roundworm which can be transferred to humans. Raccoons also can bring in fleas and get diseases such as canine distemper which can be transmitted to your dog.

As cute and funny as they may be, if you find you have raccoons on your property, you need to call a professional to make sure you get rid of them before they bring the outdoors inside your home!