Deranged Raccoons Are Taking Over An Illinois Town
The rodents are acting up in western Chicago, and it ain’t just because things haven’t been the same since Oprah left. Police in Stickney, Illinois, are warning people that raccoons are “acting strange,” and it sounds a lot like they are either auditioning for The Walking Dead or got into the wrong stuff or this is guerrilla marketing for Pet Sematary. In actuality, they have distemper – eek!
ABC 7 Chicago says The Stickney Township Animal Control is telling people to keep a lookout for raccoons that are “not moving and just staring, growling showing their teeth, crawling in circles.” This honestly just sounds like me very early on Sunday after my friend’s 30thbirthday party, but I digress. The infected raccoons are often called “zombie raccoons” and have been popping up in Stickney and Ohio since last spring. If you weren’t already weirded out, just get a load of what distemper does to a raccoon.
People with pets are told not to approach “zombie raccoon” as they can be fatal to dogs if bitten. Distemper also leads to coughing, tremors, seizures, and causes the raccoon to lose their fear of humans, so maybe don’t go on a run in Stickney blasting Cher in your noise-cancelling Bose headphones. The animal control also has to remind us that it is NOT advisable to feed one of these things, which means some moron totally did and is now a featured act in the Stickney Circus as Zombie Raccoon Boy!
Pic: Wikimedia Commons
