Mirroring recent events in Washington state, a gang of raccoons mobbed a woman in a downtown Casper hotel parking lot but they did not injure her.
In a video shared with Cowboy State Daily, an unidentified woman seems baffled and bewildered as one of several of the furry masked bandits milling underneath her truck, grasped at her leg.
The woman asks the person taking the video if he and a companion are raccoon experts. They say they aren’t, but one of the men remarks, “Well, they seem friendly.”
‘I Would Think That They Were Rabid’
Retired Air Force Col. Tucker Fagan said the video was taken by one of his sons late Sunday at the downtown Casper Best Western hotel.
Fagan’s son could not be reached for comment, but Fagan told Cowboy State Daily that he would not have wanted to be in the woman’s place.
“Hey, if you see raccoons acting like that, my instinct would be to get away from them, because I would think that they’re rabid,” said Fagan, the former wing commander of FE Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne.
Fortunately, things ended well and all the humans got to their hotel rooms unscathed, Fagan said.
A woman in Washington State wasn’t so lucky. She had to jump into her car, flee her home and call the local sheriff’s office for help after about 100 raccoons invaded her property earlier this month.
The woman had been feeding the raccoons for years, but then they started showing up in huge numbers and aggressively demanding food.
Second Known Raccoon Mobbing In Casper
Raccoons aren’t an uncommon sight after dark in downtown Casper, Best Western employee Nichole Sessom told Cowboy State Daily.
But it’s unusual for them to mob up, she said.
“I’ve been working here for over a year, and I’ve only heard of it happening twice during that time,” she said. “Once in September, and then this one that just happened.”
Sunday’s incident seemed “completely random,” she said.
“The one in September was because a hotel guest was feeding them,” Sessom said.
Raccoons usually avoid the parking lot altogether, Sessom added.
“I leave here at 11 at night, and I will usually see one or two running down the street, but I don’t see them in our parking lot,” she said.
Don’t Feed The Trash Pandas
Feeding wildlife is never a good idea, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, because it puts people and wild animals at risk.
Wildlife rescuer Patricia Wyer of Cheyenne also previously told Cowboy State Daily that people shouldn’t feed raccoons.
They might seem cute and friendly at first, but they can become increasingly demanding and aggressive, she said.
Time To Shut That Door
Fagan said that to his knowledge, nobody was feeding the raccoons that his son took video of.
Instead, they might have been drawn in by something they smelled when the woman opened both of her truck’s front doors.
Toward the end of the video, a couple of the critters can be seen preparing to climb into the truck’s cab through the open driver’s side door.
A man – who Fagan said is his son’s co-worker – walks up and shuts the door, foiling the raccoons’ plan to raid the vehicle’s interior.
Fagan doesn’t blame the woman for being nervous.
“Man, that was strange. I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “She seems like she was afraid, and I would have been too.”
Contact Mark Heinz at mark@cowboystatedaily.com
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
