Weird and Violent Attacks: Possible Rabid Animal.... Any Ideas?

[BeckyLa]

I just don't understand what would be able to tear apart a heavy chainlink fence and rip boards off the coop walls yet only have a 3-4" paw print......

 

[spook]

could be a Fisher or a racoon. They will kill for the sport of it and do some of the weirdest things.
Unlike somes belief, we don't have any animals that "drink blood", they may lick it, but dracula is still in the movies.
Perhaps placing flood lights and a baby monitor out in your yard, wire the bottom of the chicken run, place rocks around the outside of the house. Dig down about 1 foot, or more and place rocks, wire, wood, what ever you have available into the area that is being attacked. Racoons are horrible at killing, they fish any animal, cat, dog etc right out through a hole that they would have to squeeze out.
Good luck to you.

 

[rooster0209]

Sure sounds like the attitude of a Wolverine. They are mean, feisty & powerful animals, especially for their size. They can take down a moose, a chain link fence would not be a problem.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20060221&slug=wolverine21m

 

[EelKat]

thanks


I'm in Maine. Not Wolverine territory, but one was hit by a car less than a mile from my house about 4 years ago. I saw it and stopped to see what was going on. The police said they didn't live around here, so figured it got brought into the state some how, possible got locked in the back of a truck or something. A live one was sighted later that same year, and made them start questioning the fact they are not supposed to be in Maine, so yeah, they've been close by to my house before... that actually could explain the ripping up the fence and tearing boards off the hen house and knocking over the woodpile.


I'm actually not sure if it's just one animal, or if it could have been different animals different times. The attack on the bantam house was just that one time, and so that could have been a one time weasel attack. A weasel is the only thing I could think of that could get through the bantam house door. The bantams looked like the thing had broken their necks.

The hens in the hen house though are being ripped up...wings and legs torn off. So I think I've got 2 different attackers I'm dealing with.

The paw print was weird, and it could have been messed up because it was in mud, cause it had rained and the ground was really mushy, so I'm not sure how accurate that could be. It leaves claw marks usually, this is the first time it left a paw print.

I've got 24 hens left. I have one one-winged hen that survived the first attack, and I stitched her up and put her in a body cast until the hole where her wing was heals. No idea how she survived.

I still have all the bantams, except for the ones that died the one night the bantam house was attacked.

We have a "guard dog", but he in the house at night, he's just a little 13 year old cocker spaniel, so I'm not sure he'd be much help against whatever it is. But he's out with the hens during the day, so this thing is not scared of "dog scent" either.

 

[amazondoc]

As someone else already said, a rabid animal would be dead by now.

I'd go with wolverine or fisher. Go to Walmart and buy a hunter's wildlife camera (motion detector camera), and catch the bugger in the act!

Sorry for your troubles! You've got a really impressive story to tell!

 

[EelKat]

okay... so, I just went and looked up wolverine on Google and was reading up on them, and it mentions them killing moose, and so I felt I had to add this...

last year pieces of a dead moose got dragged all over our yard, it was like some weird nightmare, I went out and there was a giant leg laying there in the garden! OMG! it freaked me out. Every day a new piece showed up, for about a week. Also more than once, in the past 5 or 6 years dead deer have turned up in the swamp. The local police told us that they were likely to have been killed by bear or coyote (both run rampant in the area, and we've got at least one mother bear with cubs in the forest behind our house, though she/they have never bothered us...the bear have been living out there at least for the last 15 years, back when I saw them the first time; and there's a pack of about 12 or 15 coyotes that wander through every few months, though they have never bothered us either, they just pass through) , but after what I just read about wolverines, and what happened with the moose last year, what's happening now with my hens, I'm thinking it's very likely this thing is a wolverine.

The police keep saying wolverines are not native to the area, but twice recently they know of them being sighted, so wither they are native or not, somehow a couple of them got here and are known to be not far away.

 

[featherfooted]

I don't think wolverines are scared of anything and are very nasty. From what you described the first thing I thought of was wolverine. Good Luck and be careful!!!

 

[Love my Critters!]

OMG! Sorry you are having this happen. I agree that if it were a rabid animal, it would be dead by now, due to not being able to swallow water. I also agree that if it was me, I would be camping out with a gun, maybe put a baby monitor out there, sleep inside with your gun, when you hear comosion, go out and kill the darn thing. When ever we have an attach (nothing like your describing though), my husband is always waiting outside all night for the "critter" to come back, and he kills it.

Good luck!

 

[farm_mom]

I also live somewhere where wolverines aren't supposed to exist, but MI now has documented proof of it's existence. There is a local man who keeps track of her and on his site (www.wolverineguy.com) he describes the paw print as "abnormally large track that has 5 toes....3 out front and one on each side, similar to thumb and pinky on humans." He's become a bit of an expert on them and has talked to the people in CA who have recently discovered a wolverine there (although their supposed to be extinct there too.) He has his email displayed on his site, perhaps he could help you. Good Luck!

 

[chicknmania]

How about checking with the game warden?