A Washington state woman's raccoon ordeal appears to be over. The Poulsbo resident fled her home and called 911 last week after she was surrounded by around 100 hungry raccoons demanding food, the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post on Monday. Police put her in contact with wildlife officials and a simple solution was found: Stop feeding them. "Our wildlife conflict specialist for Kitsap County met with the resident, who has stopped feeding the raccoons," state Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Bridget Mire tells MyNorthwest. "The raccoons appear to have started dispersing now that they are no longer being fed, and we are glad for a positive outcome to this case."
The woman said she been leaving food in her yard for about a dozen raccoons for 35 years, but they were joined by dozens of aggressive newcomers about six weeks ago, the New York Times reports. "She said those raccoons were becoming increasingly more aggressive, demanding food, that they would hound her day and night—scratching at the outside of her home, at the door," sheriff's office spokesperson Kevin McCarty said, per the AP. "If she pulled up her car, they would surround the car, scratch at the car, surround her if she went from her front door to her car or went outside at all."
"They saw this as a food source now, so they kept coming back to it and they kept expecting food," McCarty said. The sheriff's office and the wildlife department determined that no laws were broken. "This is a nuisance problem kind of of her own making that she has to deal with," McCarty said. Mire says it's illegal to feed large carnivores like bears but there's no state law against feeding raccoons. But, Mire tells the Times, officials discourage feeding wildlife not only because it can lead to situations like the one in Poulsbo, but because it "draws animals together, possibly mixing healthy and sick animals and spreading diseases among them." (More raccoons stories.)
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