From around that neighbourhood.
www.owensoundpolice.com
Each spring local police services deal with a surge of calls from the public regarding what they believe are ‘rabid’ raccoons. These raccoons appear around residential properties during the daytime hours causing people concern. Police are wanting to educate residents that these raccoons are not necessarily rabid, but rather the animals may be experiencing a common condition called distemper.
Symptoms of distemper can be similar to that of rabies, however distemper is a neurological disease and can include behavior such as walking in circles, acting disoriented or the raccoon could have discharge coming from its eyes and mouth. There is no risk for humans to contract this disease from raccoons. . . .
That's not to say the MP wasn't justified in engaging 'Rocky', you never know the extent of the threat when he bursts in grinning a grin. If the MP's name isn't Daniel (
wouldn't that be a hoot), it should be his nickname from now on.
The only time that I was aware of MPs (actually it was the RPs who did most of the shooting) using their sidearms to dispatch animals was on the camp at Ismailia (Egypt UNEF) back in the 1970s. There was a problem with feral animals (mostly cats but some wild dogs) roaming the camp so the RPs (who did the patrolling armed with SMGs) were authorized to kill them. After several . . . ahh . . . incidents, high powered pellet guns were acquired from Germany to be used for that purpose. They performed adequately - if used properly and the shooter wasn't too drunk - but that's another story.
How great is the rabies problem in that area? Would it be enough to justify rabies vaccination, if not for all members posted to Meaford, then perhaps to all MPs who, like the individual in this incident, could be required to confront a possibly infected animal and deal with it's fluids post-dispatch.
As for his shooting ability, from personal experience (in Rwanda) using a pistol to deal with wild dogs who blocked my path, at least he hit it; my couple of rounds only scared them off, though my intent was more deadly.