When Racoons go bad

Down where I live at the base of the mountains, the only time I have to worry about racoons is when they are rabid. This seems not to be the case in some areas, like Olympia, Washington, where racoons have taken to killing cats.

It's not just cats being attacked. Five raccoons actually ganged up on and carried off a little dog, who survived.

One thing that makes these raccoons scary is they have no fear. One neighbor threw firecrackers at them to try to scare them off, and it didn't even bug them, Hall said.

"It's a new breed," Keeton said. "They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid."

"There's one really big bad dude," she added.

"He was the biggest raccoon I've ever seen. He was a monster," added Tony Benjamins, whose family has had two cats killed.

Urban dudes are like that I guess.

thanks to National Review - which likes the fact this occurred in a Blue state, "so it has yet to occur to anybody that these raccoons can, you know, be shot."