Theresa Evans and her family live near Seligman, Mo., only a few miles from the Arkansas border.
Eight years ago, her husband was helping to tear down a barn in Arkansas when he found three little raccoons about two weeks old. An Arkansas conservation agent gave him the baby raccoons to take home and feed, knowing they would die if left there. The Evans family raised all three, and in a few months the two male raccoons went back to the wild.
The female stayed, and was never kept in captivity, but allowed to roam. It learned to come into the home and use a litter box like a cat. That’s where Theresa Evans made a mistake. Had she never let the raccoon come into her home, there would not have been a problem.
A couple of weeks ago, two Missouri conservation agents came to the Evans house without a search warrant. According to Mrs. Evans, one of them stepped in when she answered the door, and instructed her that if she did not allow them to take her pet raccoon with them she would be taken to jail.
She insists that agent Daniel Shore told her to take the pet raccoon and put it in a cage in his pick-up, or she would be taken to jail. Shore says he is the one who picked up the raccoon and put it in the pick-up and he didn’t need a search warrant as Mrs. Evans welcomed him in without the threat of jail.
You can believe whomever you want. Theresa Evans says the threat of jail made her believe he could come into anyone’s home any time he wanted to, and that neither agent ever touched the pet raccoon, they made her do it.
Shore told me they had acted on a complaint from someone, but later, his supervisor, Greg Fritz, told me there was no actual “complaint.” He said they had acted on “information received.” He said the raccoon was taken to a private home where people had a license to keep a raccoon in a cage, and it is being “rehabilitated.” It likely will die in that cage. Rehabilitation of an eight-year-old pet raccoon is laughable.
Mrs. Evans says no one was ever bitten or even scratched by the family pet, and it has never been caged. She asked to visit it, and was told she could not. She is afraid it may have been disposed of, or just released into the woods. Greg Fritz told me I could not see the raccoon either, and could not get the name of the person who now has it.
I asked him to talk with Larry Yamnitz and see if I couldn’t see the raccoon just to assure Mrs. Evans it was alive and well. He called Yamnitz, the MDC enforcement chief in Jefferson City, and called me the next day to say that Yamnitz had verified that I absolutely could not. She broke the law, Fritz continued to admonish me.
He said they could cite her and cause her to pay a fine for having the pet, and that her husband could be charged with violating a federal law, the Lacey Act, which deals with the transportation of animals across a state line. All this can hang over their heads for up to one year, just in case they consider trying to get the raccoon back or take any action against the MDC.
I have a pet raccoon here on Lightnin’ Ridge which I raised from a baby. She roams free, comes up on my porch to be fed occasionally, gets in the trash when I don’t put the lid on tight, and enjoys it when I scratch her ears. I asked Fritz if I was violating any laws and he said as long as the raccoon isn’t in my house or in an enclosure, everything is fine. If it comes into my screened porch, I am legal only if the screen door is open.
Knowing that, I asked Fritz if they could just return the raccoon and insist it stay outside and not be allowed inside. Mrs. Evans told me she would comply with that, just to have back a pet they had for so many years, and loved like most of us would love a pet dog. That, of course, would solve the problem and the raccoon would be free, rather than in that cage, facing “rehabilitation.”
Fritz said the MDC couldn’t do that, because the Evans family might agree, and then let the raccoon come in the house. In other words, they couldn’t be trusted.
He told me as we talked that all MDC agents were people of integrity and he didn’t believe any of them would lie. He said people like me don’t understand the type of people they have to deal with.
So the eight-year-old raccoon is in a cage now, and the Evans family has lost a pet, just because they let it in come in their house. If you have a pet crow, or a pet squirrel, or pet raccoon, keep it outside, unconfined and you will be okay, at least until some MDC agent decides differently. The Evans problem could easily be solved by my proposal, and if anyone in the Department of Conservation wanted to bend a little, the raccoon could come back, live outside in a dog house, roam free and be fed cat food and all would be well.
That is, if indeed the raccoon hasn’t been destroyed. I doubt the raccoon is in a cage anywhere, but no one will know that for sure, as no one will be allowed to see that raccoon ever again
This is all little more than taking power and using it against people in the wrong way. It wasn’t necessary, it benefits no one.
Greg Fritz is quick to point out that it is against the law to have a wild creature as a pet. But it is also against the law to kill a copperhead in my lawn, or to give a crappie I just caught to my little eight-year-old grandson to put on his stringer.
In the past month I have done both! If you shine a flashlight at a deer from your car window, it is illegal, known as “harassing wildlife.” There are all sorts of things that the MDC can charge you with because they have some silly law from out in left field to support them.
Maybe Fritz is right, maybe they have the support of a majority of Missourians, but if they do, it is because so little of what they actually have done for the past 20 years ever sees the light of day in the news media of our larger cities. Few people will ever hear about what they just did to the Evans family.
Sports
August 11, 2012
Dablemont: It’s against Missouri law to allow wild pet in your home
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Globe/T. Rob Brown Outlaws runner Enrique Finol celebrates with teammate Alex Wise (10) at the dugout after scoring a run against Chillicothe on Wednesday.
An opportunistic Joplin Outlaws offense and a strong start from Adam Bax equaled a blowout victory Wednesday night and a series win over the Chillicothe Mudcats.
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