Reports of sick raccoons up again
Posted on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
BENTONVILLE — Reports of drunken masked bandits are filling local police reports again, but the suspicious subjects aren’t human. They’re raccoons with distemper.
There have been more than 15 reports of "sick raccoons"in Bella Vista over the past week.
Chief Deputy Jim Wozniak of the Bella Vista division of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office said the high number of calls prompted the Sheriff’s Office to contact the Game and Fish Commission to find out why there have been so many calls regarding raccoons and so early in the year. "Normally, we get three or four, and it’s over,"Wozniak said. "The amount we’re getting lately is a little out of the ordinary."
Wozniak said most callers report they’ve seen a raccoon in the daytime acting drunk. Usually, the raccoons won’t run away when approached by a human. The stumbling, dazed, fearless appearance of the animals are signs of distemper, a disease that can be harmful to humans and pets.
Raccoons are very common, particularly in urban areas. They are well adapted for survival in cities. As omnivores, they will eat almost anything and have learned that garbage cans and trash bins are excellent sources of food.
Sgt. Mike Smith of the Bentonville Police Department said warm weather always brings out the distempered pests. "We get a lot of those calls every year. It’s that time of the year again,"he said. "People call, we go there, bag it up and take it away. We try to catch them if we can."
The Game and Fish Commission told Wozniak the same thing — warm weather likely brings out the pests. They are out earlier this year because warm weather arrived earlier than usual. "(The reason) seems to be unknown, but some ideas might be a dry fall and winter, mild winter temperatures this year and, of course, the growing number of people feeding corn to wildlife, especially deer feeders,"said Matthew Irvin of the Game and Fish Commission.
Irvin said that distemper is a virus that naturally occurs in the wild. He referred to information from a Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study that says high reports of distemper often indicate an outbreak of the virus in the wild.
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