Raccoon ruckus

COEUR d'ALENE - Penny Inglis had the fright of her life when she thought her English bulldog, Gus, had cornered a stray cat in her dining room.

Much to her surprise, it was a raccoon. And it was not happy.

"I could not believe what I was seeing," said Inglis, 71. "He had green eyes and his mouth was wide open. And he was standing up on his hind legs.

"It was like a nightmare."

The commotion began around 10 p.m. Monday. Inglis' Yorkie-corgi mix, Hazel, was in the back bedroom barking at what Inglis assumed to be the feral neighborhood cats.

"You know how little dogs bark," she said. "Then, all of a sudden, it was like she got butchered."

The sliding glass door in the bedroom was open, but the screen door was closed. The screen has a metal piece on the outside; Inglis said she believes the raccoon slipped a paw under this metal piece and let itself in.

"He got his foot in there and he slid it open," she said.

Hazel tangled with the raccoon for a moment before Gus charged into the bedroom, chasing it into the hallway where Inglis, who is disabled, was seated in a recliner.

"As I got up, here comes a raccoon and Gus down the hall," she said. "I saw it was gray, and I thought it was a gray feral cat. I thought, 'Oh, Gus is going to kill that cat.' They about knocked me down. All I saw was a gray streak and Gus going after him."

Gus had a showdown with the raccoon and took a few hits to the nose, but he eventually chased it out the way it entered.

"Of course, I'm screaming bloody murder, I'm frantic," Inglis said. "The neighbors heard me. I was hysterical."

Inglis called the police, who checked under the beds and secured the area to ensure the raccoon was no longer in the house. It appeared to have made a clean getaway, under the cover of darkness in the 3400 block of 12th Street in Coeur d'Alene.

"Penny called 911 at 10:15 p.m. She said a raccoon was attacking her dog," Coeur d'Alene Police Sgt. Christie Wood told The Press. "She said the raccoon tore down the screen into the house. The 911 dispatcher notes in her call log that Penny was difficult to understand and Penny disconnected the call. Officers did go to her house but no report was taken. That is not unusual. We would not take a report on a raccoon, we would just make sure she was OK."

Wood said the police have not received any other raccoon-related calls.

"I just couldn't believe that was happening," Inglis said. "Gus was going to kill him. If he would have gotten ahold of it, he would have killed it. He's a very protective dog."

Inglis said neither dog has left her side since the incident. The little dog suffered bite wounds on her leg and a puncture wound on her back. Although they had been vaccinated for rabies, Inglis took them to the vet just to be safe. She said her vet didn't seem to be concerned about rabies.

"The only strain of rabies detected in Idaho is a bat strain and bats are the only reservoir, but other mammals can be infected through a bite or exposure to saliva," said Panhandle Health public information officer Melanie Collett. "It's very important that all domestic pets are up to date on their rabies vaccinations."

Collett said the last time an Idaho raccoon tested positive for rabies was in 1968.

"We encourage people to avoid wild animals and not touch them with bare hands," Collett said.

Phil Cooper, wildlife conservation educator with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said no other raccoon incidents have been reported and no raccoons have been brought in for testing.

"Raccoons are very opportunistic," Cooper said. "They will enter any buildings that they can get into. They do so when they think there may be food there. Often they become habituated to garbage cans where they can find food and leave the area unnoticed. When they return and the cans are empty or indoors, they start to explore looking for the reward they had found before. I am not saying that is the case in this particular instance but that is a pattern they tend to follow. They also love bird seed and the same principle applies that I mentioned with garbage cans."

Inglis said she does feed a few feral cats each night. This food could have been appealing to the raccoon, Cooper said. He said it was probably not the raccoon's objective to get in a scrape with Hazel and Gus.

"They are fearful of dogs and only stand their ground when they don't have other escapes or options," he said. "The raccoon likely entered the house and then encountered the dogs and neither the dogs nor raccoon had escape options. The raccoon would not have entered the home with the intent of attacking the dogs. Dogs are used to hunt raccoons and the raccoon will always run from the dog and typically up a tree unless cornered. When cornered, they may attempt to scare the dog off with aggressive postures."

"These little dogs think they're so tough," Inglis said, holding Hazel close. "That was the scariest thing in my life."