Invading raccoon surprises, injures homeowner
April 11, 2008
By Samantha Tisdel Wright
A Ouray man attempting to rid his house of a raccoon, which had entered through a cat door last week, was bitten on his hands multiple times and suffered a punctured bone and a severed nerve.
Dr. Brian Degenhardt, D.O., who is employed at Rocky Mountain Integrative Medicine in Ridgway, underwent a series of rabies shots and surgery to remove bone fragments from one injured hand, and is set to undergo surgery to repair nerve damage in his other hand next week.
Early in the morning on April 3, at about 2:30 a.m., Degenhardt, whose family was at the time out of town for spring break, said he heard a noise in the living room in the area where the family kept food dishes for their pet cats. He came downstairs and in dimly lit conditions, reached for what he thought was a stray cat.
"I went to grab it on the back of the neck," Degenhardt said. "It started growling, scratching, biting, and making horrible noises. Then I saw its mask and realized, it was not a cat."
By the time Degenhardt realized his mistake, the raccoon was "chewing on my hand," he said. He was able to disengage himself only by throwing the animal across the room, where it hid in the house while Degenhardt cleaned up and investigated his wounds.
He called the police. The officer who came to the scene said, "there wasn't anything they could do," Degenhardt said. He declined to have the officer contact Emergency Medical Services and drove himself to Montrose Memorial Hospital for treatment.
The raccoon, meanwhile, remained in house (located at 832 Fifth St.), and "ended up destroying a significant amount of things," said Degenhardt, then later managed to escape back out through the cat door, although a Division of Wildlife (DOW)officer had installed a barrier there.
A live trap, left outside the house by the DOW in the hopes of recapturing the raccoon, failed in this mission but did manage to instead trap a skunk, which proceeded to spray the environs. The raccoon is still "at large."In spite of the injuries he sustained, Degenhardt said he does not hold what happened against the raccoon. "My personal mistake was that I didn't know my enemy," he said. "I didn't spend the time to see what I was dealing with. The raccoon didn't do anything other than what it was created to do, finding food and defending itself."
http://www.ouraynews.com/Articles-i-2008-04-11-176990.112113_Invading_raccoon_surprises_injures_homeowner.html 
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