A Nazi Legacy: Raccoons in Germany
A few years ago my brother Jeff was visiting Charleston South Carolina. A German sailing boat had docked at the wharf. My brother got into a conversation with one of the sailors. The sailor spoke no English, but my brother is fluent in German.
The German told my brother about his pet "Waschbaer." My brother had never heard this word. He asked himself, "A washing bear? What the hell?" The Kraut told my brother, in German, "You know, it is an American animal, it has black eyes and a ringed tail."
Well, to Jeff it sounded like a raccoon. However, he knew that this was an American animal and was nonexistant in Germany. He soon realized that this German did in fact have a raccoon.
Jeff told me this story on Thursday, and got me interested in the tale of the raccoon in Deutschland.
I googled up this story on the Nazi link to the Waschbaer in Germany:
Fuhrer's pal blamed for furry furor: 'Nazi raccoons' tormenting Germans
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post
Published on: 05/27/07
Kassel, Germany -- In 1934, top Nazi party official Hermann Goering received a seemingly mundane request from the Reich Forestry Service. A fur farm was seeking permission to release a batch of exotic bushy-tailed critters into the wild to "enrich the local fauna" and give bored hunters something new to shoot at.
Goering approved the request and unwittingly uncorked an ecological disaster that is still spreading across Europe. The imported North American species, Procyon lotor, or the common raccoon, quickly took a liking to the forests of central Germany. Encountering no natural predators -- and with hunters increasingly called away by World War II -- the woodland creatures multiplied and have stymied all attempts to prevent them from overtaking the continent.
Today, as many as 1 million raccoons are estimated to live in Germany, and their numbers are steadily increasing. In 2005, hunters and speeding cars killed 10 times as many raccoons as a decade earlier, according to official statistics.
Raccoons have crawled across the border to infest each of Germany's neighbors and now range from the Baltic Sea to the Alps. Scientists say they have been spotted as far east as Chechnya. British tabloids have warned that it's only a matter of time until the "Nazi raccoons" cross the English Channel.
For the most part, the raccoons haven't disrupted the natural order of things in the forests, although some people blame them for reducing the number of songbirds by stealing eggs from their nests. Rather, the biggest impact has been on humans. Complaints are soaring about fearless raccoons that penetrate homes and destroy property, saddling owners with expensive repair bills and hard-to-dislodge pests.
The Germans call them Waschbaeren, or "wash bears," because they habitually wash their paws and douse their food in water. And no place in Germany has more of them than Kassel, a city of about 200,000 people in the central state of Hesse.
The city lies less than 20 miles from the Nazi fur farm that is usually blamed for Germany's raccoon explosion. Wildlife biologists say the problem was aggravated by the release of raccoons from other farms that sustained bomb damage during World War II.
Five years ago, a family of raccoons scratched and munched their way into a house belonging to Ingrid and Dieter Hoffmann of Kassel. The brood settled into the Hoffmanns' chimney and -- despite efforts to smoke them out -- ruined their roof, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix. The Hoffmanns also spent about $1,300 to raccoon-proof their residence with electrified gutters and other countermeasures.
Dieter Hoffmann, a retired orthodontist, wagged an accusing finger at a visitor: "We like the United States of America, but we do not like your Waschbaeren!"
For now, the city limits its efforts to handing out pamphlets urging residents to secure their garbage and compost heaps, two prime feeding areas. Those tormented by the varmints have two options: deal with the problem themselves or call a private trapper such as Frank Becker.
Trapping is usually just a temporary fix, however; Becker said it's just a matter of time before more raccoons move into the neighborhood. As a result, he said, he concentrates on selling home-security systems that zap creatures seeking to force their way in.
The German told my brother about his pet "Waschbaer." My brother had never heard this word. He asked himself, "A washing bear? What the hell?" The Kraut told my brother, in German, "You know, it is an American animal, it has black eyes and a ringed tail."
Well, to Jeff it sounded like a raccoon. However, he knew that this was an American animal and was nonexistant in Germany. He soon realized that this German did in fact have a raccoon.
Jeff told me this story on Thursday, and got me interested in the tale of the raccoon in Deutschland.
I googled up this story on the Nazi link to the Waschbaer in Germany:
Fuhrer's pal blamed for furry furor: 'Nazi raccoons' tormenting Germans
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post
Published on: 05/27/07
Kassel, Germany -- In 1934, top Nazi party official Hermann Goering received a seemingly mundane request from the Reich Forestry Service. A fur farm was seeking permission to release a batch of exotic bushy-tailed critters into the wild to "enrich the local fauna" and give bored hunters something new to shoot at.
Goering approved the request and unwittingly uncorked an ecological disaster that is still spreading across Europe. The imported North American species, Procyon lotor, or the common raccoon, quickly took a liking to the forests of central Germany. Encountering no natural predators -- and with hunters increasingly called away by World War II -- the woodland creatures multiplied and have stymied all attempts to prevent them from overtaking the continent.
Today, as many as 1 million raccoons are estimated to live in Germany, and their numbers are steadily increasing. In 2005, hunters and speeding cars killed 10 times as many raccoons as a decade earlier, according to official statistics.
Raccoons have crawled across the border to infest each of Germany's neighbors and now range from the Baltic Sea to the Alps. Scientists say they have been spotted as far east as Chechnya. British tabloids have warned that it's only a matter of time until the "Nazi raccoons" cross the English Channel.
For the most part, the raccoons haven't disrupted the natural order of things in the forests, although some people blame them for reducing the number of songbirds by stealing eggs from their nests. Rather, the biggest impact has been on humans. Complaints are soaring about fearless raccoons that penetrate homes and destroy property, saddling owners with expensive repair bills and hard-to-dislodge pests.
The Germans call them Waschbaeren, or "wash bears," because they habitually wash their paws and douse their food in water. And no place in Germany has more of them than Kassel, a city of about 200,000 people in the central state of Hesse.
The city lies less than 20 miles from the Nazi fur farm that is usually blamed for Germany's raccoon explosion. Wildlife biologists say the problem was aggravated by the release of raccoons from other farms that sustained bomb damage during World War II.
Five years ago, a family of raccoons scratched and munched their way into a house belonging to Ingrid and Dieter Hoffmann of Kassel. The brood settled into the Hoffmanns' chimney and -- despite efforts to smoke them out -- ruined their roof, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix. The Hoffmanns also spent about $1,300 to raccoon-proof their residence with electrified gutters and other countermeasures.
Dieter Hoffmann, a retired orthodontist, wagged an accusing finger at a visitor: "We like the United States of America, but we do not like your Waschbaeren!"
For now, the city limits its efforts to handing out pamphlets urging residents to secure their garbage and compost heaps, two prime feeding areas. Those tormented by the varmints have two options: deal with the problem themselves or call a private trapper such as Frank Becker.
Trapping is usually just a temporary fix, however; Becker said it's just a matter of time before more raccoons move into the neighborhood. As a result, he said, he concentrates on selling home-security systems that zap creatures seeking to force their way in.
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Trapping coons in a live trap is easy enough to do with a honey bun as bait. They love them. So do owls. I've got up in the morning a couple of times and had and owl in the live trap. Coons slow roasted with a lot of butter, and brown sugar is good to eat. About the only way I like to eat them though. 0 -
I read that in the paper and got a laugh out of it. The "Fourth Reich" has risen. [}:)][:p] 0 -
I could have been skunks[:0] 0
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