A woman near Poulsbo, Washington called the Sheriff’s Office with an unusual problem.
She couldn’t leave her house.
Nearly 100 raccoons had surrounded her property and were refusing to move. They scratched at her windows, at her door, and at her car whenever she tried to get in it. If she stepped outside, they swarmed her. Day and night they circled the house waiting for food.
She had started feeding raccoons on her property 38 years earlier. At first it was just a small family that wandered in from the surrounding woods. They were friendly, they were manageable, and she enjoyed their company. For nearly four decades the arrangement worked fine. A handful of raccoons would show up, she would feed them, they would leave.
Six weeks before she called 911, everything changed.
The number went from a dozen to over 100 almost overnight. The new arrivals were different from her regulars. More aggressive. Less patient. They had not grown up around her and did not have the same familiarity.
“The normal raccoons are nice,” she told deputies. “But the new ones scare her.”
Sheriff’s spokesman Kevin McCarty summed it up simply. “Somehow the word got out in raccoon land and they all showed up to her house expecting a meal.”
She had contacted a trapping organization before calling 911. They quoted her $500 per raccoon. With nearly 100 animals on her property that would cost at least $50,000.
She has since stopped feeding them.
Woman Spent 38 Years Feeding Raccoons… They Eventually Unionized 💀
