Raccoons

A North Baltimore woman will have to endure a series of rabies shots after a raccoon bit her in her back yard. Elizabeth Knottrodt, 67, had planned a relaxing evening with a book Saturday at her home in the first block of Melrose Ave. Knottrodt said she was sitting in a mesh lawn chair around 5 p.m. when she felt what she took to be a playful paw on her back. "I thought it was the cat," Knottrodt said yesterday. "I reached around to pet it, and I felt a bite." Knottrodt said she jerked her arm forward and found a raccoon hanging from it. The animal refused to let go until her screams alerted her husband, Reinhard, who came running, she said.

A quarter-century ago, experts theorize, a rabid Florida raccoon either wandered onto a West Virginia-bound flatbed or, more likely, was relocated there by a hunting club. Whatever the vehicle, that introduction caused one of the most intensive rabies outbreaks in history. Once confined to Florida and Georgia, raccoon rabies is now entrenched across the entire Eastern Seaboard, north to Canada and west to Ohio and Alabama. In the nation's most ambitious attempt to eradicate rabies from the wild, federal and state officials are trying to halt the proliferation by dropping millions of vaccine-laced pieces of bait in a virtual moat from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico.

An Essex man pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges for hanging a dead raccoon on the porch of a black family in Middle River two years ago, according to a plea agreement released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday. Joshua Wall, 20, hanged the raccoon by a noose on the family's porch in April 2010 after a fight between a child who lived with Wall and the son of the victims' family, according to the agreement. Wall conspired with four unnamed people, but he was the only one charged in the incident.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - Jim DeStephano worked his way down a trash-strewn creek in Lodi, N.J., stopping every few paces to peer into the shallow water. On one side of the creek was a public housing project. On the other, a packed row of houses. But to DeStephano, this was prime wild muskrat country. And it was time to check his trap line. The first few spring-loaded devices were empty. But as DeStephano came under a small bridge, a dead muskrat sagged in the water, a small steel trap clamped around its neck.

A mother and daughter from Middle River have pleaded guilty to a civil rights violation for their involvement in an incident in 2010 in which a dead raccoon was hung by a noose from an African family's Middle River porch, prosecutors said Tuesday. Dena Whedlee, 42, and her daughter Brittany Whedlee, 20, admitted to encouraging their co-conspirators - including Billy Ray Pratt, 24, of Halethorpe, and Joshua Wall, 20, of Essex - to hang the raccoon from the family's porch after a boy in the family got into a fight with Dena Whedlee's son, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein.

THURMONT - In the past, like any other landowner along the Blue Ridge Mountains, Richard Hahn has had his share of run-ins with wild raccoons. At times they have feasted on the waterfowl that reside at his Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo, a 38-acre park often visited by a stroller brigade of moms and their children. Today, though, the zoo expects to open a $2,000 exhibit that will showcase one particular run-of-the-mill raccoon who's typical in every way. Except that he's not. This geriatric creature named Onix enjoyed a long and privileged life as an illicit guest in a rural Washington County rancher before he was caught and hauled off. In recent weeks, he has gained celebrity status among self-described raccoon rights activists and in Internet chat rooms where nature lovers have tried to reunite him with his longtime caregiver.

Ronnie Turner, 14, remembers the prank he pulled as a 10-year-old on his father, Michael. One night while camping at Susquehanna State Park near Havre de Grace, the Norfolk, Va., boy drifted off to sleep as his father wove a traditional spooky bedtime story. Just before dawn, Ronnie stuffed his sleeping bag, making it appear that he was still in it. He sneaked out of the tent and stretched fake spider web he had saved from Halloween across the tent's entrance. "I've watched a lot of camping movies and shows, and I know lots of good tricks, and I wanted to get my dad for scaring me," Ronnie said.

In response to the letter, "Cats: Natural-born killers" (March 9), so are humans. When I moved into my house in Havre de Grace 18 years ago, there was an abandoned house behind our property and there still is. There were also 19 feral cats. There were squirrels, opossum, raccoons and birds. The cats were being fed by neighbors who thought they were doing the right thing. Still, in a few years the feral cat population dwindled to 15, then ten, then about five and now there are three. They died from feline leukemia mostly and cars secondly.

All dogs, cats and ferrets can get their rabies vaccinations in the coming weeks at clinics sponsored by the Harford County Health Department. Four clinics will be offered 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 28 across the county, with four more scheduled the following weekend, 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 5. The rabies vaccine costs $5 per animal, a fee maintained by the health department for more than 30 years and the lowest among any neighboring jurisdictions....

Cosbyology: Essays and Observations from the Doctor of Comedy, by Bill Cosby (Hyperion, 175 pages, $17.95) Against his will, Bill Cosby is taken to a ski-gear shop, where he sees "all these salespeople walking around with a tan, wrinkled skin but white circles around their eyes. They looked like negatives of raccoons." In one of the 18 other delightful stories in this brief, sweet book, Cosby recalls being taken by his parents from their Philadelphia housing project to a hospital to have a broken shoulder looked at. There, he observes: "Clinic, for those of you who have never looked this up, is a French word which means 'sit there until you heal.