The Varmint

As many of you have seen on Facebook, I've had a furry visitor at my house yesterday and today.

Yesterday I let my cat outside and left the garage door to the outside open so that she could go in and out as she pleased.  I hadn't heard from her in about half an hour, so I decided to look in the garage to see if she was there.  I saw her on top of her cat tree and noticed out of the corner of my eye that something was moving.  I saw a raccoon had invited itself inside the garage!  It climbed under the garage counter and decided it was going to stay there.

The raccoon gets underneath the garage counter.

I tried to use a shovel to push it out.  I still had the garage door open so it had a way to escape.  It didn't hiss at me until the shovel started messing with it.  I was pretty sure it was sick at that point because it didn't want to move and should have been more aggressive than it was for the circumstances.  It just moved into a corner harder for me to reach.

The raccoon wants to stay in this garage!  He won't leave!

Butterscotch was still watching from her cat tree. She didn't want to have anything to do with the raccoon, so she went back in the house and kept away from the wild animal.

Out here, 911 sends phone calls to the comm center just inside Yellowstone Park.  Not much happens there anyway and I considered this to be an immediate situation, so I called them.  (I probably would have gotten in trouble if I did that anywhere else in the United States!)  They forwarded me to Fish and Game, which couldn't come until later that evening, and then they had to postpone it until today.  I had to leave the raccoon in the garage while I was at work for the evening.

At work, I read a Facebook user's message to me which inspired me to make my own catch pole when I got the chance.

When I got home around 11:30 pm, the raccoon was still in the garage, but now it was behind the wood stove.  I got a plastic pipe we normally might use for our underground sprinkler system and fed a rope through it so there was a loop on one end, and two ends on the other that I could pull.  Using a long stick and this make-shift catch pole, I managed to get the raccoon's head in the loop.  I tightened it and nabbed the little guy!  I put it in a cat carrier for the night.  I shouldn't have been able to do that; it was sick and I don't think it was up to a lot of activity.

The raccoon stays in a corner behind our wood stove, wanting to be left alone.

I captured the raccoon!

I also realized that the animal didn't eat any of the cat food in the garage or the bird seed that was stored while I was at work.  It drank a little water from the cat dish, and that was it.  Usually raccoons make big messes when they're in a building.

The next morning I talked with Fish and Game.  They told me that since no saliva had gotten in contact with me or my pets that I could release the raccoon since they didn't want to do any tests on it.  I took the raccoon in the cat carrier to the river on the edge of the property and tried to get it out.  It wanted to stay in though!  After disassembling the device, I finally forced the raccoon to leave.

Honestly I doubt I did the raccoon any favors by releasing it.  The animal was sick and may not survive.  On the other hand, I'd rather have it outside the garage than in!  I think I'll be careful in making sure I leave the garage door shut so I don't have any more unwelcome visitors.

One of my guests at the hotel suggested I contact our local newspaper about this interesting story.  Soit made the Enterprise today too.  It isn't available online, so I'll type the text of the article and include the picture they showed.

North of Gardiner

Ingenuity gets raccoon out of garage

By Enterprise Staff

A man who lives north of Gardiner succeeded Monday night in capturing a lethargic raccoon he found in his garage.

Wayne Dore discovered the furry invader Monday afternoon after he had left the garage door open.  He called 911, judging the situation to be an "immediate problem."  Dore notified a dispatcher at the 911 call center that the raccoon appeared to be sick, behaving in a docile manner uncharacteristic of a raccoon.

Dore fashioned an implement to catch the raccoon Monday night.  He said he followed the recommendation of a Facebook user, who advised him to feed a piece of rope through a long plastic pole to form a loop at the end of the pole.  He held two ends of the rope at his end of the pole and brought a loop at the other end over the raccoon's head.  He then put the animal in a pet carrier.

"I shouldn't have been able to do that," he said of the rope capture.  "I think because the animal was sick I could do it."

The animal ate nothing in the garage and drank only a little water from a dish, Dore said.

Dispatchers at the 911 call center directed him to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.  Dore said and FWP official advised him the Park County Health Department normally handles situations such as his.

Because he had not been in contact with any of the animal's saliva, Dore was cleared to release the animal.

"I'm just going to let it go at the river near my house," he wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

Photo by Wayne Dore.  Pictured is the raccoon in Wayne Dore's garage, Monday.  Dore, who lives north of Gardiner, caught the animal Monday night and released it Tuesday.