Bawwhh. I had been wondering, what's the temperament of captive raccoons like? I'm not thinking of adopting one, but it really had me curious. The only personalities I've seen of raccoons in the wild has been either "overly shy" or "vicious". XD

This is extremely variable. Given enough freedom and respect they are great companions. It's not really an issue when caring for and raising young raccoons, however, captivity generally causes more confinement than most mature raccoons can tolerate, and severely effects their temperament. Males seem to get particularly unstable in captivity, having no real territory to patrol, and no.....females!

As for your observations of wild raccoons, you can't really blame them for being "overly shy", considering the things most people will do on sight. Believe me, I've seen too much of it 1st hand. And the "vicious" ones are mostly posturing and noise. Though males stepping in each other's territory can trigger physical fights that look pretty bad. But it's rare they draw blood. It would be like humans having a noisy slap-fight

BTW, thanks for the watch! Now to go comment on your cool anthro coon

Answers my first question.

<83

I can't say much more than that.

That must have been very rewarding! Are your raccoons rehab animals or pets?

Yes, it was indeed rewarding. Quite a few such as Indy were a delight to have around.
All the raccoons I had in my care were rehab animals, though some were other people's ex-pets.

This is such a cute photo!
I've been volunteering at a wildlife refuge for a few months, and we're just getting in our flood of springtime babies. Saw my first batch of rehab raccoon babies.. they are the most adorable little things in the world! ;__;
Just wanted to say that what you do is wonderful. Lots of people see raccoons, opossums, etc. and automatically think that they're vicious or disgusting and it puts them off of helping out orphaned babies or injured adults.

It's nice to meet someone else helping out the wildlife. I hope you stay with it.
People's overall fearfulness of wildlife is a damn shame. We're become so detached from nature.
I really should put up some photos I took of me petting a wild possum (much to her displeasure) to help show just how 'vicious' possums really are :-P Can't get much more harmless than a possum, but most seem afraid of them.

I always applaud when people are brave enough to bring in possums to the refuge. The 'worst' thing I've had one do to me is open his mouth wide and cling to me with his dexterous little paws while I tried to release him.
I'm going to stick with the refuge until distance becomes an issue. Then I think I'll look into being a docent or the likes. I love being able to assist our wildlife directly.
And you should! Possums are so much fun. It's hard to believe that people are really scared of them.

Docent? Like an educator on wildlife?
It's not a term I've heard used before

Yeah! It'll be a while though, since I'll be going off a ways for university.

That's cool. People need to hear about wildlife from the standpoint of someone that knows about the animals from personal experience.
BTW, uploaded that possum. In HD video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHxMgzmXSHA

Too cute! :D I love the tags. QUITE vicious.
I just don't understand how somebody could find an animal like that scary or dangerous. Even when they're cornered they don't act aggressive! :\ oh well. I guess that goes back to educating people about wildlife.
Actually, last Saturday was my high school's senior prom.. my group walked out on the balcony of the conference center where it was at and found a baby 'possum! There were already some kids watching him and keeping their distance- even though he was as only as big as a squirrel and hiding behind a trash can.
Scooped him up and put him back on the trail to his mom. If the law enforcement officer that was there wasn't so.. trigger happy.. we would have taken him to the wildlife refuge.
My friend and I have also taken in some of our snakes to zoology and biology classes for the other students to see up-close. I love being able to show people that animals like these aren't as bad as they think.

I don't do snakes. Not fearful of them, just don't like 'playing god', feeding them mammals. Having to choose, I'd rather a rat live, than a snake. Did almost step on a ringneck a few hours ago. Tried to catch it by hand to show dad upstairs, but the snake was like... "hell no". So I stopped scaring it and went in

Sounds like that Officer is a real winner, for you to have such concerns. Well the possum will likely be fine. They go independent pretty early. You should have pretended the possum was attacking you to scare all the timid people, just to make light of their fears

That's why I feed mine frozen. I love rats too much to give them live or even fresh-killed... plus it's much safer for them.
Yeah, our school lies in a drained swap area, so we gets lots of mice and snakes and the such. One woman had a live baby water snake trapped when it hid from her in a crack on her back porch, so she told the officer who got a contractor to fill it up with cement. After I offered to catch it for her.
Lord knows what he's let happen to the scores of sticky trapped mice.
He's generally not pleasant to work with. Can't wait to graduate in two weeks.
I think the funniest thing was that the girls were cooing over the possum while the GUYS were all hiding! They did the same thing when I brought in the snakes. Girls were giving them baby talk and petting them, guys were hiding under their desks.

LOL....are there any guys in your area that AREN'T idiots?
Yeah, those sticky traps a nightmarish. 1st saw one 'in use' as a kid, down at the mean kid's house down the street. Never forgot that sight.
Anyway, yeah, I get real tired of people having such total disregard for animals' lives. Makes me feel pretty much as indifferent toward those humans' lives. Something bad were to happen to such people, I'd have no pity for them. Your "officer", for example.

Nah, not really. I live in a place that gets a deadly combo of tourists, military folks, and rednecks. So you get people down here that either A) don't know we have this kind of wildlife, B) are desensitized to killing everything, or C) don't care at all. FFFFFFlorida.
I think the worst part is that I've offered to take care of 'pest' situations at the school but they always balk at the idea. They wouldn't even let me move a Black Racer out of a corner.. a few teachers just poked him with sticks and rolled pinecones at him until he found a way out.
There's a special place down below for people that treat animals like garbage. The guy's a scumbag in the first place, so.

B and C have a lot shared. You don't get your honorary redneck badge till you've pointlessly brutalized your 1st animal.
And I live in Florida too ya know. But I've been to worse places. #1 in my list? Texas. Steel leghold traps legally for sale in stores.
1st time I saw that, I was wishing for a P90.

I used to live where we'd see Black Racers sticking their heads up randomly in the yard. They became less plentiful over time as we gained neighbors. But they where able to survive thanks to large yards and un-used back alleys. They got some attitude too.

Racers are the best. I was trying to leave for school one morning.. one was basking in the driveway. Kept slooooowly driving up to him(didn't feel like getting out to shoo him off) and he just reared up and looked at my car scornfully. I eventually DID have to get out to move him..
Ick, footholds... no problem with rubber footholds(got stuck in one, don't judge me :p), but the fact that people can still get steel jawed traps like that is sickening. My dad got some kind of hunting supplies catalog in the mail that had almost nothing but leg/foothold traps, full body traps, and snares. We were on the "Do not send" list ASAP.

I wanna pet her.

She would have loved that

Did she live long?

I don't have the luxury of that knowledge. I only had her a half year or so. She was released to the wild, and I can only hope she did well.
In later years, I rehabed independently, so I was able to better follow the success of some of those raccoons. But I always hope for the best.

I love those little fuzzies.

Me too. I miss them a lot. Maybe later this year I'll look for a local rehabber who would like a hand, like I use to do before I went independent.
You could also, you know

I may look into it.

The reward is unmatched, and it's for a good cause!

Oh my god.

OH MY GOD!

IT'S SO CUTE! = D xD

You sound like I felt, the 1st time I was faced with baby raccoons. They're impossibly adorable. Total joy too.

So they aren't bad when they are tamed?

I know the wild ones can be so vicious that some members of animal control claim they'll rather try to catch trouble gators than a raccoon causing trouble. xD

Well, you don't really tame a raccoon. That train of thought is sure to backfire. It's not because raccoons are "vicious", but because they don't tolerate captivity well, and they're not the sort that take orders from anyone. But being bad pet material doesn't make them bad animals. In fact, I started off with wild raccoons. Spent 2 years with them, watching, petting, even holding them. Never had a problem, aside from being stepped on occasionally while sleeping. Wild raccoons are pretty mellow. But it's more difficult to keep them happy in captivity unless you're extremely dedicated and willing to make sacrifices.
Thankfully, they're pretty easy to keep happy in their youth, so rehabilitating orphaned raccoons is relatively easy. Well, bottle phase is a little tricky.

I can understand why you've heard that comparison to alligators though, as they're ferocious fighters. But it's not aggressive behavior - they fight to live. Honestly, don't back a raccoon into a corner

Actually kinda sounds like how my family keeps cats. We only keep them in the house all day during brutally cold nights and that's mainly in winter, otherwise they spend most days outside. My favorite cat out of what was originally three we had HATES being stuck in the house for more than a few minutes. xD

We live in a boring neighborhood so it's pretty safe to do so with them. It's redneckish, but not super redneck where you can't let your pets out otherwise some asshole will plink them with a .22. Nothing like that.

Never back anything into a corner. xD

That's good advice!