Urban myths are stories too amazing to be disbelieved. Here’s a sub-urban myth which we want so much to believe. The myth of sharing our neighborhoods with their original animal inhabitants.

If one of nature’s varmints is disturbing your domestic bliss, you can choose to remove him. Most of us like to think there is a human to do this. You can catch racoons in a live trap, same with skunk, or any other indigenous critter which you have deemed a pest, but you cannot release them into the wild. Using a live trap just takes the killing out of your hands. The animals will be euthanised. That’s the harsh reality.

If you rent the trap yourself, or borrow one from a neighbor, trap the little feller yourself and drive him twenty miles afield, you may be breaking the law. In fact, unless you are releasing him into another suburban neighborhood, you are breaking the law. There’s a very good reason for this. Wild animals who’ve comingled their food and feces with domestic animals are likely carriers of domestic deseases. To release them into the wild would mean contaminating the wild populations.

About the only honorable course of action we might consider could be to accept that we cohabit with our fellow critters and let them be.