Only mammals carry rabies. Opossums can carry rabies but it is extremely rare. Bats, Raccoons, foxes and skunks account for the majority of reported cases in the US.
milee30 - the fear is the birds and bats claws getting tangled up and stuck in my hair.
Oh, OK. But - now I gotta know - WTH is up with your hair that things could get tangled in it? Maybe that’s what we should be figuring out! 
Stop worrying so much about the bats - they don’t want to be anywhere near you anyways - and work on using less sticky hair product. IMO, having a big, sticky mess of hair is a more serious issue than the bat thing.
milee30 - haha No hair product, no weird hair that I know of or no one has ever mentioned. Something about those little claws as they dive bomb us in the pool have me envisioning them coming down on me and getting those claws in my hair. I never said it was a normal, well thought out fear. I also don’t like mice for similar reasons. Though as I talk about it I’m more convinced I’m right!
If I got bit by a possum I’d still want it tested. It might be very rare, but so are brain tumors so I’ve been known to beat the odds. While there haven’t been any current positive cases in PA, opossums still make the list (see previous link), so it’s possible, esp if it were acting rabid enough to have human contact and bite. I might be more forgiving if I surprised one at night and tried to pick it up, but can’t say I’m dumb enough to do that.
Possums we come across on our farm are shot on site - not due to rabies, but due to EPM. We lost our first stallion to that in 2004. I have no sympathy for possums.
Everybody has to make their own decisions, but our wildlife management plan only involves killing animals that are a direct and immediate threat. Opossums, coyotes, snakes, alligators, raccoons, etc are endemic to our area. I guess if it makes you feel better to shoot them you can, but given that they live all around everywhere another will be taking it’s place within a night or two unless it’s going to bite me or my family/pets, I figure other ways to live with that stuff.
We have a large debate about this issue in our community right now. A very expensive neighborhood has had some coyotes move in and start eating the local foo foo dogs. That is sad, of course, and the homeowners are demanding that the county allow them to trap/kill the coyotes. (Whether that should be a county level decision is IMO another issue that should be discussed, but that’s the law, so…) Anyway, the county position is that killing or removing coyotes makes no sense because they’re endemic to the area so more will simply move in. Not possible to eliminate coyotes without a much larger, impractical, coordinated giant effort that would also result in unintended consequences.
I share your sentiments, @milee30.
Our town trapped/eliminated a few coyotes that lived in the wooded areas nearby when residents complained… now the same homeowners complain about hordes of bunnies eating up their gardens.
Funny you mention the bunnies. That’s exactly how I know the relative number of coyotes in our area. Right now, there must be fewer coyotes because the bunnies are back. There’s one in particular that is in my front yard so often he’s not even afraid of me any more. A couple of times I’ve been weeding or doing trimming only to realize that dang bunny is sitting very still within arm’s reach. All I can think is -run, bunny! You don’t know that I’m nice and slow bunnies become dinner! They are very cute, though.
Yes, here in Florida we’re being overrun by people who move or visit here only to be SHOCKED and horrified that there is an alligator in their yard or a snake on their patio or a raccoon in their garbage or bats that come out at night. Sigh.
^Like the people near me who move next to a farm for the expansive views then are shocked! SHOCKED! I tell you, that once or twice a year the neighborhood smells like manure when they fertilize the fields.
We have bunnies so accustomed to us that they don’t even run when my dog comes out. They know she can’t catch them. She knows she can’t catch them. So instead she adopts a casual cool attitude as if she couldn’t care less about them and they go on munching the grass.
We once had a raccoon stumbling around our yard in broad daylight and were just about to call animal control to kill this apparently rabid animal when we realized she was just blind drunk from fermented windfall apples that had fallen from our tree!
Since the Greyhound racing ban just passed in Florida, they’re going to need to find homes for approx 8000-12,000 Greyhounds over the next two years. We’re seriously thinking of adopting one. But one of my concerns is that it might eat “my” bunny. Irrational, but true. I guess I should just wait a few months until the coyote balance returns and I will no longer have to worry about my bunny…
I get too attached to “my” wildlife. It’s totally dumb but I still tear up when I think about my favorite Cardinal. They’re wild birds, so live tough lives, but I get to recognize the ones that live in my yard and it’s hard to see a favorite get older, weaker and then disappear. I know, I know.
Possums, raccoons, foxes, groundhogs, and snakes are shoot on sight critters on our farm. For the snakes it’s due to my phobia. For the others it’s due to their being a real hazard to our horses or chickens. There are no natural predators for any of those here - no coyotes, etc - so humans take that spot rather than having us being overrun with them. It works - quite well actually. When another one comes too close, they get taken out too. If no one takes them out the population doesn’t remain the same, it explodes pretty akin to deer in non-hunting areas with no predators around (or feral cats or any wild animal without enough predators). Real farm life isn’t at all like the Disney videos where every animals is a caring creature. One raccoon will take out several chickens - hunting for fun - and they can be crafty at getting into places one thinks is well fortified.
We let bunnies live. They make great hawk food keeping the hawks from decimating our chickens. We take out some squirrels to avoid being overrun, but keep enough around to clean up the walnuts that fall. Cats take out chipmunks. It’s illegal in PA to take them out - they’re a protected species here - so I suppose cats on PA farms are all lawbreakers.
This is all different than taking out the rabid animals we’ve come across. Those three have been further out on our farm - seen from a trail I walk daily (where groundhogs could happily live IMO) and were acting like they had rabies. It’d be tough to believe they didn’t and there have been confirmed cases in our county. The Wildlife teacher at our school has used my video of the groundhog to teach about rabies - not a confirmed case - but we’d all place bets on it - our vet included as I showed him the video too.
Shooting nonrabid animals listed is about ego and phobia, but whatever you need to tell yourself, go ahead.
No different than other people being afraid of bats and you giving them the talk about how bats have their place. All the things you list have their place and will be replaced by others coming in from less trigger happy adjoining properties.
I have had problems with raccoons (as in them taking up residence in the attic). Because they damaged the roof, I had them trapped. The animal control guy took the trapped animals someplace (he wouldn’t say exactly where) at least 20 miles away and released them. I don’t wish harm to the raccoons but because they’re so smart and can carry rabies, I also don’t want them living in my house. Or damaging the car door or the garage door, as did the ones that, respectively, got stuck in the car and got trapped upside down between two panels of the garage door; both tried to chew their way to freedom.
@milee30 Have you ever lived on a farm?
Yes. And I’m not remotely anti gun.
I like venison. Rabid animals should be shot. An animal attacking your family or animals should be shot.
There is no ego involved whatsoever. There is preferring the life of certain critters over others. We prefer our chickens and ponies to the list above. We (and every other farm around us) does what is necessary to protect our livestock. At Gettysburg they’ve hired sharpshooters in the past to take out the abundance of deer. Here we have hunters - humans.
Snakes is certainly a phobia. I’m preferring my sanity to their living around me. We take out about one per year so it’s not really an issue. There were far more than that the first few years, but now they seem to know to hide better or have found more welcoming places to live (not to mention fewer of them if we’ve taken out would be parents).
Ego, phobia - same effect for the things you’re shooting on sight. Especially the animals that are endemic and will just be replaced by another one within days. Poor management strategy, unnecessary, so ego is one of the remaining options why it would be chosen.
Well then… we take out those that attack our critters or dig holes in pastures making young pony life precarious.
I’m very pro gun control. Not everyone needs guns and they certainly don’t need large capacity. Handguns are pretty useless on a farm. We don’t have one (aside from an antique hubby’s family passed down to him - not sure if it works or not).
I’m very anti trophy hunting. We have no mounts of anything in our house or on our walls. We protect our own critters or eat what we shoot. We use venison instead of beef.