Little Raccoon

Real vermin

Lately, the Black Sea coast has been really flooded with common raccoons (Procyon lotor). In Novorossiysk, three raccoons have climbed recently through an open window on the balcony into a flat located on the third floor of an apartment building. The man living there gave food to the uninvited guests, thereby making a big mistake out of ignorance. “At five o’clock in the morning, my cat began mewing and snarling, I woke up and saw raccoons on the balcony,” the man recalled. “I thought that they would run away and went to bed. When I woke up later, they were still there. There is a forest near my house, raccoons must have come from there, but they have not been seen here before. We can still see raccoons on the Anapa highway, near an abandoned wasteland and lagoon. I fed them a bag of sausages and a loaf of bran bread.”

Common raccoons often get into hotels. For example, they made a mess at one of the Anapa hotels. “The fluffy-striped family had fun tonight. The owner of the hotel is upset,” the video of this visit was in social networks. As a rule, in southern hotels located close to nature, guests are warned about the raccoons and are asked to close the windows. “One night, a raccoon sneaked up into our guest’s room through an open window, and while she was sleeping, got in her bed,” a worker at a hotel located in the mountains of Sochi said. “Being only half-awake, the woman did not understand and began to stroke the animal, thinking she was at home and her cat was at her side. After this incident, we ask our guests not to leave the windows open.”

In Sochi, raccoons can be found even in the centre of the resort city and on the beaches, but most often, they are fond of making a mess in the private households of gardening associations, causing significant damage to the garden owners. The animals can “turn the house upside down” and steal pets. “The raccoons came to us several times,” said a member of one of the Gardeners’ Non-commercial Partnership in the Sochi’s Central District. “First time, while we were out, they got into the house in the afternoon, turned everything upside-down and broke glass jars. And the second time, they came to the yard at night and stole two ducks. They were not even afraid of our dog.”

Experts said that raccoons posed harm or danger to people and explained how to behave with them, as well as the history of their appearance and the ways to fight them.

Anatoly Kudakhtin, Professor, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Honoured Ecologist of Russia:

- Please tell us what raccoons are.

- Common raccoons are synanthropes (living next to humans and at the expense of them) and invaders (alien to our fauna). They quickly get used to the benefits of civilization, especially to “free” food, and turn from wild to domestic animals, but remain no less dangerous for humans and nature.

- Why are they dangerous?

- For the last five or seven years, I have been dealing with this problem, the influx of common raccoons is an “environmental bomb”. For example, at the Utrish Nature Reserve in Anapa, the raccoons are the main enemies of Mediterranean spur-thighed tortoises (Testudo Gopherus) whose “babies” they literally eaten out of the shell, like seeds. The raccoons destroy Red Book plants, and their bites or scratches can lead to diseases, including fatal ones.

- Which one exactly?

- Behind a pretty smile, lies a hidden carrier of rabies. A person can become infected from a scratch or a bite.

- Where did they come from to the Black Sea coast of Russia?

- In the 1970s, raccoons were brought from America to the Abinsk and Tuapse districts from where they quickly spread to Sukhum.

- How to deal with them?

- They have no enemies in nature, for example, they can easily hide from wolves in trees. They are also of no interest to hunters - their fur is not in demand. It’s necessary to deal with raccoons but, unfortunately, the mechanism has not yet been found.

- How to behave the right way when meeting raccoons?

- In no case you should give food to raccoons, otherwise they will keep on coming to you all the time and bring their families. After feeding them once, you “put a sign” to them “The dining room is open.” Especially tourists like to give food to raccoons instead of driving them away immediately.

- How many raccoons are there on the Black Sea coast in the Caucasus?

- No one can accurately calculate, but I believe that there are several thousand, and there are more and more of them - they, like rabbits, continue to actively reproduce, becoming real vermin.

Natalia Treboganova, Head of the Aviary Complex of Wild Animals at the Caucasian Reserve, says about the situation with raccoons:

- How many raccoons are there in total at the Aviary Complex of Wild Animals run by you?

- We have nine raccoons now.

- How did you get them?

- One raccoon got hit by a car in a tunnel, the other one was trapped, and presumably, the trap was set for the animal, and it lives without a paw now. There are also “refused” raccoons. One day, a young couple called us and asked us to take their raccoon Alice. The animal was their friends’ gift, and at the age of two months, Alice began to show its bad temper in their flat. I refused to take the animal, and later on, they brought and left the animal here. We found Alice in the dappled deer (Cervus nippon) enclosure, it was about to go to the wolves, its owners were not around. I had to “give a shelter” to Alice.

- How did Alice get along with the neighbours?

- Alice was very active, we were afraid that it would be torn or injured by other animals. At first, being in an enclosure with other raccoons, Alice lived in a large cage, since it was necessary to introduce it to the rest raccoons without being afraid for the neighbours, this is a long process. Then, we opened the cage and looked at the behaviour of the animal. This “lady” took a leading position and showed who “runs the house”.

- How do raccoons behave as pets?

- People think that they have brought a cute animal, but the reality is that in the apartments, raccoons destroy everything - from curtains and wallpaper to taps and baseboards. In general, they pull an apartment to bits so that you can forget about the interior. With their agile paws, they can disassemble any appliance to small parts. So, their cute appearances are deceitful. They are the most mischievous animals.

- What else do you know about raccoons?

- Raccoons are an alien species, not native. Their main habitat is North America. In the middle of the last century, they were brought to Europe. At first, people raised these animals to hunt them because of their beautiful fur. Then it turned out that they are omnivorous, like wild boars, they even eat slugs and snails. People hoped that these animals would help to fight pests, but the raccoons became vermin, they can squeeze through any opening and start messing around. In gardens and orchards, they kill living creatures, and then they start damaging plants and fruit trees. The main thing is that there should be no hollows in the trees in the gardens, or holes under the trunk of the trees, otherwise they would settle there. They do not hibernate and live in the areas where the winter is warm. They need to feed on something, and in the middle latitudes, it is difficult to find food. In the south, there is a lot of food for them. In addition, they eat the food from garbage containers. I would also like to note that raccoons have destroyed the Red Book newts and can catch fry by their paws in water bodies. But the biggest problem is that they are carriers of rabies, without showing clinical signs of the disease, they themselves do not get sick, but they infect others.

- How many offspring do raccoons bring?

- They reproduce very fast, and, they can give birth three times in a season, up to six puppies each time.

- I know that every animal in the Aviary Complex has a sponsor who provides food, or rather, gives money for food. Who funds your raccoons?

- Our raccoons found sponsors very quickly. For example, we have two sponsors, they are from Moscow and Veliky Novgorod.

- Why are they taken so quickly?

- Because they are cute, always hungry and holding out their paws for food, and this touches people.

- What do raccoons usually eat and how much does it cost to keep them?

- In a year, each raccoon needs for 80,000 roubles for food including meat (except for pork, we do not give it because it is fat), we mainly give beef, chicken and by-products, as well as fruits, nuts, honey, milk, and eggs.

Talking Competently

Valery Shmunk, Director of the WWF Office in the Russian Caucasus Eco-region:

- For the Krasnodar Territory and the Western Caucasus as a whole, raccoons are invasive animals, that is, alien species. They were brought to the Kuban area for the first time in the middle of the last century. The first raccoons were released into the wild in the Goryacheklyuchevsky District in 1951.

The fluffy animals are omnivorous and, moreover, have successfully adapted to the southern climate. Over the past couple of years, the raccoons began to actively move from the foothills of the Caucasus to the mountains. So, they were seen in the Guzeripl area at an altitude of 650 metres. In fact, the raccoons inhabit all the areas except for the ones inhabited by large predators, such as wolves. However, raccoons are a wood-climbing species, so they can hide even when meeting a wolf.

The omnivorous nature of raccoons causes considerable damage to the fauna of the region. Due to the spread of these pretty, but alien animals, the populations of endemic species, that is, living only in the areas of the Krasnodar Territory and Adygea, suffer the most, for example, Karelin’s newts (Triturus karelinii), Lanz’s newts (Lissotriton lantzi), various frogs, including fire-bellied toads (Bombina) and Colchian toads (Bufo colchicus). In addition, common raccoons destroy the birds’ nests that are on the ground or destroy the eggs of the Nikolsky’s tortoises (Testudo graeca nikolskii Ckhikvadze et Tuniyev), this species is in the endangered-species list, the Red Data Book. The resettlement of raccoons is an example of the detrimental effect of ill-conceived decisions during the acclimatization of animals.