[Auracle]

My 14 pound dog regularly chases flocks of turkeys in our yard and forces them to fly up in to the trees.

Most people - especially in cities - aren’t used to wildlife and are easily scared, just as those turkeys aren’t used to a dog chasing after them.

The first time I was in NYC there was a raccoon in the center of a trail in Central Park, just kind of chilling. Everyone was giving it a ridiculously wide berth and people looked at me like I was crazy for walking right by it. It’s just a raccoon. As long as it’s not rabid it’s less potentially dangerous than many dogs.

Of course, there’s the flip side of the coin where people think it’s OK to approach large wildlife in national parks…

[masdfmfgjafm]

> As long as it’s not rabid it’s less potentially dangerous than many dogs.

Thing is, if a raccoon is just chilling and isn't terrified of people near it, there's a very real chance it is rabid.

[Auracle]

Anywhere other than an extremely busy city park, sure. I've put down animals I thought might be rabid before, and in my experience they usually act a bit more odd than "I'm extremely used to people."

[anikan_vader]

Animals that are habituated to humans are also dangerous though.

People feed squirrels and raccoons, and then some random passerby ends up getting attacked by the habituated animal who wants food. Squirrels can easily draw blood.

[trhway]

terrified? I've never seen a racoon being even slightly afraid of people. I mean yes, they may give you a way, yet it would be demonstratively very slow and with a look of total annoyance. Actually seeing racoons first time here in CA - there are a lot of them everywhere on Peninsula - that was the first time when i questioned the mantra that the humans are the top of creation as i saw that at least racoons are definitely not aware about that, and judging by the pretty contemptful look in their eyes they have a pretty different opinion about that.

[Auracle]

I'm in a rural area and they'll definitely get away from me quickly when I come across them, usually by scampering up a tree.

[LegitShady]

thats probably because collectively we stopped using even elementary technology like atlatl, bow+arrow or slingshot, and we lost the need to hunt for the most part. A relatively primitive human could kill racoons with the standard tools they had then. If you needed to you could figure it out.

[WalterBright]

The little bandits are always stealing my trash.

[bryanrasmussen]

>My 14 pound dog regularly chases flocks of turkeys in our yard and forces them to fly up in to the trees.

As god is my witness, I thought turkeys couldn't fly?

[ruste]

Farm raised turkeys are too large to fly or even reproduce independently. Wild turkeys happily fly though I'm not sure how far.