Varmint by chingsta on Flickr.
According to the Post, the massive Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is being overtaken by an ever-growing army of masked mammals, and there’s no end in sight. The population of raccoons making their homes in the landmarked cemetery has ballooned into the hundreds and maybe even thousands, and they sure don’t share the goodwill enjoyed by the the cemetery’s parrot population.
Groundskeepers used to trap the animals and turn them over to the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control to keep the population manageable. However, last year the organization stopped accepting the snared animals, and as a result, the cemetery population has swelled dramatically. Groundskeepers still trap the raccoons, but end up releasing them in another areas of the cemetery.
The horde of raccoons have been tearing up the turf, eating flowers left at grave sites, and pissing off the neighbors who reside near the cemetery and who now find their trash opened and their pets assaulted.
The cemetery’s VP of Operations noted that “I got one call from a woman who wanted to know if she could shoot it with a .22..I didn’t know what to tell her.” Another worker said, “If I put out 100 traps out tonight, I’ll probably get 95. At night, you can see their glowing eyes everywhere.”
Cemeteries are creepy enough at night, the last thing you need is a pair of glowing eyes creeping around in the shadows–that, and oh yeah, rabies.
