He totally ignored life fish tossed right in front of him.
.22 rounds in the gravel right in front of his face had zero effect.
One .380 Glazer straight down between his shoulder blades severed his spine and flattened him out like a raccoon rug. (And, yes, he tested positive for rabies...)
Rabies is a, terrible, *terrible* thing.
Her babies were just about gone anyway and she too was rabid yet she kept coming back to protect them from me.
She actually stood up between them and me and raised her paws in what appeared to be a warding gesture.
It was heartbreaking.
I *had* to put them out of their obvious agony but other than going after my dogs to keep them away from her kids and putting herself between me and them, she didn’t seem that ‘abnormal’.
[frankly, I expected them to test positive and her to be negative but that’s not how it worked out]
It was a horrible choice I had to make but a necessary one.
I would love to forget it but it’s apparently going to stay with me for a long time.
I pray to God I never have to do something like that again.
A huge mountain lion or bear charging you is one thing; an early stage rabid coon mama protecting her dying babies is another.
Even in her horrible sickness, she was a mother, to the end.
It was not a ‘triumphant’ moment in my life.
[and *all* of this came about because the idiot up on the hill started feeding hordes of stray, unvaccinated cats 20 lb bags of food every evening, attracting every possible rabies vector down off the mountains and into our yards. we’ve had a verified epidemic here for several years]