Raccoon hitches a lift

Ballivor's National Exotic Animal Sanctuary has called for a Dangerous Wild Animal Act to be introduced after a woman ended up with a raccoon as a passenger in her car.

NEAS is calling on the Government to control the keeping of dangerous wild animals as pets, in direct response to the large increase in the number of people keeping these animals and the number of calls it is receiving about their escape/abandonment.

In recent times the National Exotic Animal Sanctuary has had to respond to calls regarding some very unusual animals such as Snapper turtles, llama, raccoons, monkeys, snakes, venous spiders and scorpions.

On Sunday evening they received a call from a woman who had got out of her car in the dark to open her gate, leaving the car door open. To her great surprise a North American Raccoon clambered into her car and sat on the front seat. She managed, with help, to get the raccoon secured in a cage and NEAS transported the Raccoon back to the Sanctuary for assessment and quarantine.

Raccoons are very good at escaping so this adult male was named ‘Houdini’.  Terry Hobdell at Irish Fencing came forward to meet this challenge and built Houdini a large and very secure weld-mesh enclosure with a custom-made holding pen to allow safe feeding and cleaning.  

Dangerous Wild Animal Act legislation is in force in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. However, the new Irish Animal Welfare Act does not restrict the importation, sale and keeping of any animals which could be a danger to the public, pose a health risk and damage to Irish wildlife.