Are you complaining about people helping a raccoon? The Internet hype is a bit much but why are you framing it like this raccoon should have died years ago.
I do this too, but it's important to make sure you're either fully adopting them to keep them inside and care for medical issues, or at least make sure they get neutered/spayed before they're let out again if they can't live indoors. Stray cats are terrible for the local ecology- just feeding them without taking those steps is definitely harmful. In my town you can call animal control for strays and they'll clip the ears so you can see that they can't reproduce and are safe to leave out.
I'd also be hesitant to give people the idea that racoons are safe to interact with, even stray cats can be dangerous, but racoons can do much more damage. I feel like the ideal situation is they capture him and find an animal sanctuary away from the public. Wild animals with genetic issues don't usually live a great life
Or you can just toss some food out and call it a day
This ideology that all stray animals need to be siphoned up and neutered on the spot is bizarre to me. Sure there is a balance to be struck as you can't have a hundred thousand cats in a small area, but this idea that stray cats and dogs are simply not allowed to exist and reproduce naturally is insane.
Have you ever lived in a place where there aren’t effective control efforts?
These programs aren’t about people feeling good about themselves. The middle ground you suggest IS neutering and spaying all the animals you can find. The more extreme end of control is culls. It isn’t something you can ignore without pretty serious second order effects.
It ends up being pretty grim for the animals and sometimes humans too when stray population isn’t controlled. I’m talking about the conditions these animals end up enduring, not the culling which is its own grim process.
As someone who had to help get a stray cat population under control the ugly way (limited budget in a developing country), I would much rather that strays get fixed before it gets there.
I live in New Zealand, where they are big efforts to cull non-native wildlife, including all mammalian predators. There are traplines through the woods here, and I remember seeing a Department of Conservation visitor centre with a diorama of stray cats being killed by a kill trap.
Locally we've got an overpopulation of goats, and apparently they're going to start shooting them from helicopters.
They also drop a poison bait called 1080 that kills mammals from helicopters in remote regions here.
Domestic cats and dogs are not native to the Americas. They are pets or work animals. The cats should be adopted if possible and made indoor cats or neutered to keep their invasive population down. Dogs too, you need to treat feral dogs as wild and excellent rabies spreaders.
Feeding stray cats and feeding birds are very different things, pretty much at odds with each other. If a stray cat is fed, birds have a more difficult time surviving.
When I lived in Chicago I'd see rats and cats eating cat food left out alongside each other. I'm not against helping wild animals as long as it doesn't come with a rat infestation issue.
It doesn't. You already have a rat infestation issue. This doesn't cause it or further it. You think that little handful of kibble compares to the free calories available in an entire dumpster full of chicago deep dish pizza scrap that sits out in the open air day in day out?
You do you, but I'd ask in earnest people please don't. Cats are invasive to the US and wreak havoc on local wildlife populations. Where I live, so many people feed the ferals that they've become an overpopulated menace.
Homeowners are generally legally liable for anything that occurs on their property, especially if it can affect neighbouring properties to any provable extent.
There are carveouts and exemptions, but that isn’t a magical deflector shield.
So it doesn’t take a huge imagination to see how it could have negative externalities.
You are allowed to not have a fence at all if you so choose, assuming an HOA isn’t telling you otherwise. Property owners have no liability for wild animals transiting their property. If you are keeping pets and they get out I would assume the homeowner has some liability, but a wild raccoon is not any homeowner’s responsibility.
You're not liable if the animal is just passing through but if you're feeding the wildlife (actively or just have a bunch of open trash cans) and the wildlife decides to do wildlife things to your guests, you certainly could be liable.
A hole in a fence is kind of a middle area. Did you create the hole for the raccoon to enter your property easier or for it to leave easier? Rabbits sometimes hang out in my backyard to eat grass and my dogs love to chase them. They usually enter and exit under the fence in the same spot (near my neighbor's vegetable garden) but that spot is near the backdoor and they are sometimes trapped if they are in the middle of the yard or further back (they always escape but there's been a few close calls). I made a small hole at the opposite end of the yard for them to escape easier. But if I knew a critter was struggling to get into my yard, I definitely wouldn't make it easier for them.
This is a textbook example of a logical fallacy called "poisoning the well", implying that because a user has a crass username that their opinions do not deserve to be treated with the same value as someone who posts under their feasibly real world name.
To be rational, you should take opinions as written, not considering the writer, and debate them on their merits alone.
Not that their opinion was rational, as we have not conclusively proved the existence of the soul. That being said, the negative emphasis of your reply probably deserved a rude comeback.
Gruff, annoyed responses to people enjoying a mutated racoon is not acceptable behavior. It's weird.
In my opinion, taking offense at whimsy is weak sauce and deserves to be replied to as such.
I realize you can say that my opinion doesn't matter since my username is bizarroland, and I do come from a strange place, but that's still my opinion and I'll stand by it.
If you're mistaking my writing for AI then you need to calibrate your AI detection algorithm. 100% human response, and at the same time yet another attempt on your behalf to poison the well. Strange. It's almost like you don't want to engage with people as equals.
it’ll probably end up badly, not because someone fed a raccoon, but because someone halfway across the planet will develop an unreasonable relationship with this wild animal.
Merely collecting requirements for what kind of work humans need to do in order to live "responsibly"... More for thinking purposes.
Sorry to be so inspecific, Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. Cheers.