Raccoon Killed By Vehicle

A few days ago, I was walking home from juniper hill, and something disturbing caught my attention. The lifeless body of a raccoon was lying against the curb on central street. It had clearly been hit by a vehicle, and it was clearly a recent death: there were no insects, and the body was perfectly intact. I thought about moving it into the woods, and putting a trail camera on it, to record scavengers, but when I tried to pick it up, the stiffness of the body, and it's unexpected heaviness prevented me from doing it. That day, I wondered if I had found the dead body of the same raccoon that had been at the deer carcass back on February 19th. I compared the images and realized that their tails were exactly alike. The same raccoon that was munching on deer remains has now taken the deer's role. You can view videos of when that raccoon was still sniffing around Framingham here It will go through the same decomposition process, no doubt. The image to the right is back on the 19th, and the left image was taken on March 20th:

 

...And the images were taken about 100 feet from each other, so he clearly had a very specific area that he lived in. The most common reason for raccoon death is vehicles, followed by desiese, starvation and predation. This spring, all the living female raccoons will have litters of 5+ raccoons in attics, hollow trees, and hollow logs. The raccoon's role will be taken.