Lookit what I found this morning

Fling them?

Thats crazy, them are good eating!

Boil it until the meat falls off the bone, and add veggies.

Do disease can survive a good long boil.

We have a big stock pot, must be 8 gallons.

It is what we used for cooking our turkeys. They finished off at 35 pounds, and just will not fit into anything else.

If nobody was bit, then why the fuss over 'testing' it?

Skin it, dress it and cook it.

Bon apetito!

Hey ET1 ss; Just in case you are interested, there's a dead possum on the highway not to far from my house. You are welcome to it.

Also saw a dead turtle and a dead catfish that looked about 2 and 1/2 lbs in the road ditch canal. Not sure how long they've been there, but heck...just boil'em down and toss in some veggies....mmmm.....scrumptous I'll bet.....

D

Why the fuss over testing ? Because if you if you get rabies , there is no cure. If you wait till the symptoms of rabies to show up it's to late to take the shots. They had a article about rabies in our paper a while back. Sorry to scare you , but it is nothing to take lightly .

The only thing that can survive a good long boil is mad cow (beef) or chronic wasting disease (venison). To get either of these you pretty much need to eat brain matter. Google "prion" for more info.

You could eat a half rotten rabid animal if you cooked it long enough.

Pete

Good point.

Germs can be killed dead.

Proteins can not.

My DW and I can not donate our blood due to mad-cow exposure. There is no blood test to check for it, and it does not matter how long you cook the meat.

Once the brain of an animal has been frozen rabies tests are no longer possible. At -6 it wouldn't take long for a racoon to freeze solid -- I think the picture reflects this.

Just an FYI.

Whistler

All this talk of cooking and eating this racoon, I hope, is just joking around. I hope nobody is so hungry they have to eat a not-so-freshly dead animal that you don't know what it died of. I think I would turn vegetarian first.

(And, that is not to criticize those who DO eat racoons. Those, I assume, are freshly killed by a bullet and not by some unknown disease.)

Also, I'm pretty easy-going about a lot of stuff, but I think common sense would tell me not to let my children handle a dead wild animal I didn't know what it died of.

An animal can carry rabies whether it exhibits symptoms of it or not. In fact, I'd wager most raccoons in dense areas carry the virus in it's dormant state. The county animal control and/or a vet have access to the resources needed to send the coon off for testing. I don't care if it was frozen or not. Better safe than sorry.

Around my neck of the woods the virus is so prevalent that if one of your pets comes into contact, without even having injury, with a rabid animal they are boostered on their vaccine and if they haven't been vaccinated they are quarantined(at the owners expense)or euthanized.

I'd be keeping an eye on your cats and dogs as well as your kids.

And a frozen animal can be tested, the brain matter just has to be thawed first which makes the process longer.

Most country kids can't resist picking up dead animals. When my brother's, sister's and me were kids we'd bring home any dead animal we found. Our parent's were constantly warning us about rabies but we never listened. I even managed to catch a live porcupine once and brought it home to keep as a pet. Ask me how long my mother went along with that idea LOL I grumbled all the way back to the apple tree I had found the procupine in.

As an adult I am now the one who worries about wild animals. I am always telling people not to touch dead animals because they don't know what it died from.

Add me to the list of those hoping that talk of eating this possibly diseased thing is a joke. But then, I'm one of those finicky people who doesn't salivate at the sight of roadkill.

Also, what if this critter died of poisoning? Would not anyone who then consumed it be poisoned as well?

My two cents worth is that if they had gloves on and were dressed warmly as it looked, just wash their clothes and hand and don't worry about it.

Honestly, I don't think I couldn't eat a raccoon. They probably taste fine and if I had no idea I was eating some that was prepared by someone else, I probably would try it. I've never been one to worry about germs or other things most people get squeamish about and I've survivied 38 years so far, so I guess this whole thing doesn't really worry me. I was the one to handle the critter first. SOMEONE would have to handle it at some point anyway whether we threw it on the compost pile, put it in a ditch, called the authorities to take it away or whatever. I choose not to live my life worrying about every critter that crosses my path. We're not loving up on it, we're not eating it, we're not kissing it, and we wash our hands as soon as we come in from outside.

I'm not offended by all the advice about rabies and worrying about what this animal died from. I truly believe that it froze to death. If I felt the animal was a serious threat for the boys, they wouldn't have been able to go near it. It was frozen solid.

Thanks for all your thoughts and concerns. It's so interesting to read the different POVs of everyone. I haven't taken offense to anyone and genuinely appreciate all the responses!

__________________
Paula

homeschooling mom to 2 awesome boys, married to the man who makes all my dreams come true, and lovin' life on our little farm.

Hey.

That coon probably starved to death. He has his winter coat with plenty of guard hairs, so make a cap out of him.

I don't think you need to worry about rabies. I used to trap them and skin them barehanded when the hides were worth something years ago.

When it's cold, a mouth is dry and doesn't have saliva running all over. They weren't bitten, so don't factor in all the extremist replies.

Well, as a wildlife control agent and generic trapper I'm pretty familiar with rabies. You're not going to get it from a dead frozen racoon, even if you french kiss it on the mouth and eat the brains. The virus doesn't survive chill down.

And you're not going to get rabies from cooked meat.

Woo Hoo

So cook it long time, in a big pot, till the meat falls off of the bone!

Boil it down just a bit more, then add them big onion slices! Yahoo

And carrots, and potatoes. Yum!

Good eats!

You can get rabies from this kind of exposure.

But you might consider that rabies is a warm weather disease...and the racoon was frozen...

My friend's son and his friend skinned a skunk that the dad of the friend had shot. It had been acting "weird." My friend, who is an RN, got red flags when she heard this. She insisted they test the skunk...it was rabid.

Even though the boys had worn plastic gloves to skin it, the chances were just too dangerous. They had to take the shots.

YOU DON'T MESS AROUND WITH RABIES! IT IS FATAL!!!

Hey. Time for some piece of mind for concerned parties.

Excerpt taken from pdf document below:

"Of the 4,000 raccoons turned in and tested by theIowa Department of Public Health in the last 25 years, only 0.7 percent of them tested positive for rabies. That is lower than the rate for dogs(2.3 percent) and for cats (2.8 percent).Moreover, there is no record of any Iowan who contracted rabies from a raccoon and only onepossible trans-mission of the virus from a raccoon to a dog."

Link to source document:

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Pub...ns/PM1302E.pdf

Back in my younger days, my dear old Dad (now deceased) loved to coon hunt. He'd bring home a couple, and Mama, God rest her soul, made some of the best coon hash - I'd give my left leg for a big ol' pot of it right now.
"Good eats" is an understatement there, Bro - that was "magnificent eats"!!!

__________________
"Tough times don't last - tough people do"....

I see a dead deer laying on the side of a road and I start thinking... Mmmmm, 100 lbs of pepperetes. :-)

That gets me salivating.

Pete