I called Police Dispatch to request that an Animal Services staff member come out and pick them up. However, James, who was on duty that evening, was running about an hour and a half to two hours behind schedule and would not be able to arrive until roughly 7:00 PM. I told dispatch where the raccoons were located. I left, hoping James would be able to find them in the dark.

The Following Morning 12/2/2017

I parked at the Matadero Creek Bridge at 7:15 AM. On my way down the trail to the overflow channel, I first noticed that someone had been there after I left the previous evening because the No Trespassing sign on the trail to the overflow channel had been rotated 180 degrees and now faced the channel instead of the trail, where trespassers would be coming down into the immediate area. I walked over to where the raccoons lay and saw they had not yet been collected by Animal Services. One of the dead raccoons had been pulled away from where it had lain. Its hind leg had been nibbled. The snares that had been in the tree were gone. I went back into the trees for my trail camera, but it was not where I had posted it. Down the channel, I found a spatula/scraper between Markers 22 & 23. Another 10 feet down the channel, I found a small marshmallow. I thought, “Bet that’s the bait they used.” On down toward the ditch, there was broken glass. Neither the spatula, the marshmallow, nor the glass had been there the day before.

That Saturday morning, around 10:00 AM, James from Animal Services called. He had just returned to his office with five dead raccoons. We discussed the situation and what we might do about it. He suggested that I contact the rangers and file a report. I replied that I had just done so and would follow up by phone.

Ranger Johnny answered. When he caught the gist of what I was saying, he asked, “Can you meet me at the bridge? I’ll tell you in person what happened last night.” 

As I waited for Johnny to arrive, I wondered, “How can a person do such a thing as that? I don’t think they could if they heard the cubs’ calling’ in that low, rolling guttural purr they make when separated from their mother. I’d heard that distress call many times. I knew that there were cubs out there in the woods along the creek, frantic to find their mother. I remembered the way Mama raccoon wrestled with them, showing them how to defend themselves. I’d seen them wrestle and play hundreds of times, especially on my trail cameras. A tear broke. I wiped it away. 

Johnny and I walked along the channel, and he told me the following story.

Normally, he gets off work at 3:30 PM, but on that Friday evening at about 6:00 PM, he was working at the city’s maintenance yard, the MSC, which backs up to the overflow channel and the creek. A chain-link fence separates the channel from the yard. He said that as he worked, he noticed a guy riding a bicycle down in the channel. Because it was already dark, the guy had a high-powered light strapped to his cap. As the guy drew closer, Johnny saw that he wore knee-length shorts and carried a large backpack.

The guy stopped directly across from where Johnny was hiding and watched. He unpacked his backpack, rummaged around for a couple of minutes, then went back under the trees. About 15 minutes later, the guy came back out and rode away. 

Johnny said that everything looked very suspicious, so he called Police Dispatch and requested that an officer be sent out to help him. Within five minutes, a patrolman arrived. The two of them went down into the channel to where the poacher had gone back into the brush. There, under the canopy, the officer and Johnny found four leg-hold traps and one snare. (Those are vicious traps.) They collected them, found the snares, found a couple of other related items, and found that the guy used small marshmallows as bait. They picked it all up and took it in as evidence.

About a month later, Johnny worked a shift at the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve. He was making his rounds one early morning when he found a coyote hanging from a tree, and a part of the animal had been sliced open. The whole thing looked so fresh that Johnny decided to hide nearby just in case the person responsible returned. 

And return he did. It turned out that the raccoon poacher was a 17-year-old visiting from Canada, where he’d learned about using traps and snares to capture wild animals and sell their fur. Several months later, he was reprimanded at a juvenile court hearing. 

Comments are welcome.