2022, animals, Health, Nature, News, pets, Uncategorized

A Woman And A Racoon Walk Into A Bar. . .

53 Comments

Yesterday the Fargo Forum reported that bar patrons in Maddock, ND, who were in the Maddock Bar the night of September 6 needed to be aware that they may have been exposed to rabies. It seems a rather intoxicated woman came into the bar holding a racoon she had rescued days earlier from the side of the road. She was asked to leave the bar, but not before she walked all around the bar showing people her racoon. The racoon was reportedly injured when she found it, and she had nursed it back to health and was keeping it as a pet. It is illegal to keep racoons or skunks as pets here due to the threat of rabies. They are still looking for the woman and her racoon. The bar employees say they are going to dress up as racoons for Halloween,

When I was about 6 years old, I tried lifting a friend’s rather fat beagle into my father’s fishing boat that was stored along side the garage. The beagle was not amused, and bit me on my face. It was just a nip, but my mother was panicked about it. The beagle’s owners refused to lock the dog up the required number of days to see if it was rabid, so I had to have a series of rabies shots. I got the shots under my shoulder blades. It was painful. I wouldn’t want to go through that again. The beagle wasn’t rabid, by the way, and he and I remained friends.

Know any good bar jokes? What animals would you like to see in bars? What are your experiences with rabies or rabies shots?

53 thoughts on “A Woman And A Racoon Walk Into A Bar. . .”

  1. I must have heard at least a million jokes. I can never remember any of them. No experience with rabies, I stay well away from 45.
    Somewhere I have a news cutting about the world’s oldest cow at the time, who died in Ireland some years ago. She was a Kerry, either pure or crossed, an apparently long lived, long established Irish breed. They’re very small, and I believe that the even smaller Dexter breed ( my cow Sarah was half Dexter/half Jersey, and the smallest cow I’ve ever seen) was derived in part from the Kerry. This cow was 47 when she died, and the picture accompanying the article showed her in a pub with her owner, being given a pint of Guinness.

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  2. Well, you know me, I can’t think of a place that the presence of dog wouldn’t improve so sign me up for dogs in bars although that would mean I have to go to a bar. Rats.

    My only rabies story is connected to the meerkats at the Minnesota zoo. When YA was about 10, some other kid climbed over into the habitat and got bitten by a meerkat. They parents opted against having the kid get rabies shots so all of the meerkats were euthanized so that they could look at their brains to make sure they didn’t have rabies. We were at the zoo just a couple of weeks after it happened; the habitat was still empty (before they remodeled it to a playground) and YA turned to me and said “you would’ve made me get the shots, wouldn’t you?” I was feeling kind of like a bad mom because it was true. I would’ve wanted her to get the shots, but then she redeemed me by saying “I would rather have gotten the shots than having the meerkats all die.” That’s my girl.

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      1. I didn’t realise you couldn’t take dogs in bars in the US.
        My brother and I did get thrown out of a pub once because of his dog. But they might have just run out of reasons for throwing us out.

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    3. I’m a great believer in consequences, so not only I would have made my kid get the shots, I’d have made the kid apologize to the zoo staff and the meerkats (so, I’m an animist, sue me). OTOH, I’d hope to have raised a kid that understood animals and knew not to mess with nature. Apparently people today mistake the wilderness for their living rooms and wild animals for Disney characters. I’m furious that the poor meerkats had to suffer for those parents’ selfishness and laziness!

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    4. I still sort of mourn for those meerkats. The parents didn’t actually make the decision – they left it up to the misbehaving child, and the child didn’t want to have shots and basically sentenced the meerkats to death. How’s that for letting your kids dodge the consequences for their actions.

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  3. That kid wouldn’t have climbed over again if he or she had had the shots. Not that I’d have made them go through it for that reason, but to save the meerkats , I would.

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  4. Seeing the raccoon in the header reminds me that when we were in Montreal and up on Mont Real itself, we were walking through a cemetery up there because we do that sometimes and because we have friends with French Canadian ancestry and we were looking for their family names. Up in the cemetery there were clusters of raccoons, out in the daytime and seemingly unafraid of people. If you paused in their vicinity, they would advance. It was unsettling.

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  5. No rabies stories, but I love bar one liners, and wish I could remember more. Here’s one:

    The past, present, and future walk into a bar…It was tense.

    And I just found a weasel one:
    A weasel walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Wow I’ve never served a weasel before, what can I get you?” “Pop”, goes the weasel.

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  6. No rabies stories here.
    Of course, I’ll now have to listen to some Prairie Home Companion Joke Shows.
    So combining bars and animals:
    A guy walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder.
    Bartender asks, “Where’d you get that?”
    Parrot: “I don’t know. It started as a little bump on my butt.”

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  7. Further news updates: A residence thought to be the location of the racoon was searched , but no racoon was found.

    I imagine the woman released the raccoon back outdoors, which is pretty dumb if it might be rabid.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Since I seldom frequent bars, I don’t know of any animals I would want to see there. My first thought was that too many untended dogs in a bar would create dog fights (the other side of dogs) with dogs guarding food and owners. That would be like going to the dog park and who needs it? Jokes are not something I remember so I am also useless with that topic.

    Years ago I worked at Hazelden’s adolescent chemical dependency treatment facility in Plymouth, MN. The property had lake shore, and heavy woods, so it was raccoon territory. One day as I drove past the executive parking lot, I saw the Director of the facility standing in the parking lot looking at a raccoon which was obviously rabid—and it must have been quite advanced given the raccoon’s behavior. I had one of the “new” cell phones (new for the time) so I called animal control who came to get the poor animal. This Director had recently obtained a promotion to her job, and focused on an entirely new wardrobe which included large hats. She had a large black designer hat on, and I wondered if the hat was getting the raccoon’s attention. She did not seem to know what to do about the raccoon, but she told me she did not want to ruin the hat. WHAT? I thought the animal might charge her and bite. She never did have any common sense and did not last the year. At some point after I had quit and moved on, she was fired. That made sense to me. If she did not know how to cope with a rabid raccoon, how would she ever deal with a facility full of adolescent addicts?

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  9. I think cats would be nice in a bar. I can’t remember the last time I was in a bar, not that I don’t drink, because I do. Living in a smaller community sometimes feels like living in a fishbowl. Also, I really like having my license to practice my profession, and I wouldn’t want to endanger it with the slightest chance of getting pulled over for impaired driving.

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  10. No bar jokes (world’s worst joke rememberer here). No rabies stories. Not a fan of dogs in public buildings (see my dob-bite trauma story a few months ago as to why).

    But I do remember back in the day seeing hordes of polyester-suited lounge lizards in more than a few bars. 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

    *BSP* If you’re up for a drive or will be in southern/southeast MN on Saturday, Sept. 17, from 9-3, stop on over to the Four Seasons Centre in Owatonna (near the intersection of 18th St. and Elm Ave.) to experience the Rustic Mamas’ Market. It’s a huge arts-and-crafts and local small business owners selling their goods (and some services). The quality is excellent (must apply to be allowed to participate), and I was able to get in last spring for a wonderful day of meeting folks and selling a few books.

    Although I loathe mentioning it, the *ahem* gift-giving season will soon be upon us, and it’s never too early to take advantage of buying gifts for others or yourself that are produced by locally-owned small businesses. Books are especially great gifts for the readers in your life. Hope to see you there. *END BSP*

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    1. Chris, you and I could probably have a contest about who can’t remember jokes the worst, but how would that go? We could just sit there and look at each other and not say anything. The world’s most boring contest!

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  12. Hey Tim, if you are on today. Yesterday, late in the day, there was some discussion about the galaxy song by Jim post. And the question was if it’s on one of the keeper CDs, which in fact it is, it’s on Best of Keepers. I know that you made copies of a lot of the Keroers CDs a few years back. Do you still have the capability to do that if somebody needed a copy of Best of Keepers?

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  13. I used to really enjoy the PHC joke shows. Here is a segment from 2014. I tired of GK’s cluelessness about how he treated women, but I enjoyed so many other things about his shows, including the humor.

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    1. Ah, GK is Garrison Keillor!
      I’m sorry, I know that Steve knew him well.
      But he had the Everlys on his show, and he stood behind them and hummed along as they were singing. I know duets (triets? ) happen all the time, and they can be great. But somehow in this case, it seemed Garrison was a bit full of himself, as in, of course I can enhance a performance by the great Don and Phil. Intolerant of me, I know.

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  14. A grasshopper walks into a bar. Bartender says “Hey, we have a drink named after you!” Grasshopper says “You have a drink named Mark?”

    Two animals walked into a bar. The third ducked.

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  15. So…. I’ve told the story before of my problems with raccoons… they kill chickens, they eat my crops, they poop all over in the barns, they torment my dogs, and, last but not least, there was my little adventure with one that led to another one of my ER visits. (Reminds me of an episode of ‘Malcom In the Middle’ and they get to the ER and the nurse turns, sees them and says “You again?”)

    Mine’s a long story involving raccoons coming down out of the corn silo, the dogs fighting them, me getting involved, and the dogs dragging a raccoon back between my legs.
    It wasn’t a bite, we don’t think, just a lucky snag of a coon’s claw way up on my inside thigh. And I did catch the raccoon and get it tested for rabies. Negative.

    So I don’t like raccoons.

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  16. Back in Carbondale, there was a guy who had a tame racoon somewhere in our neighborhood. He used to ride around with it on the handlebars of his bike. I have no idea how he came to have it, or whether that was legal or not, but I do remember petting it a couple of times.

    At our house in Inver Grove Heights we had racoons. They’d come out at night and forage for food. They were fun to watch, though we kept a respectful distance from them. I had a fifty gallon plastic storage container by our back door where I kept birdseed, and those racoons would chew right through that heavy duty plastic to get to the seeds. Eventually I had to move the seeds indoors as there was no way of dissuading the racoons from helping themselves to whatever they wanted.

    Luckily I have no experience with rabies.

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  17. A gal approached the guy sitting at the bar.
    “You could make me feel like a woman.”
    He unbuttoned his shirt, removed it, handed it to her.
    “Iron this.”

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  19. Latest update: The racoon has been found and euthanized, and the woman has been arrested on a number of charges such as giving false information to law enforcement, tampering with evidence, and being in possession of a live fur bearer.

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        1. Your answer hadn’t appeared when I asked the second time. So it really isn’t legal to carry a live fur bearer? Why not?

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  21. When I was a kid, we kept a wild raccoon as a pet for a summer. We built a chicken wire coop for him with a little house. We kept him fed and he loved to play. Toward the end of the summer, my sister was bringing home some fresh baked bread. And the raccoon wanted it. He growled at my sister and chased her into the house. After that, we had to chase him back into the woods. But I remember him trilling and talking to me as he struggled to stay on my shoulders, when dad put him there. They’re pretty nifty critters.

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    1. At one point, the racoons, that apparently lived in the vicinity of our house in Inver Grove Heights, had babies. They were absolutely adorable, but there was no question that these were wild animals, and we observed from a respectful distance.

      One night, something had caused the babies to scurry up a tree in our back yard, and they were making some pretty alarming, and threatening noises. We thought they were in trouble and went out to investigate. The racoon mama, who was on the ground under the tree, let us know in no uncertain terms, she didn’t want our interference. We were both smart enough to not want to tangle with her, and went back inside. We never did discover what the commotion was all about, but it was resolved without any bloodshed that we were aware of.

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