I have had far too many days over the past few years when I wanted to hurl a dead raccoon at something or someone. I think it started with 9-11, has escalated with the recession, poor economy, high unemployment numbers, and poor choice of political candidates. So I can relate to the woman in Burlington, Vermont who got tired of waiting for the city to remove a dead raccoon from the city street and, according to the Associated Press, “took its bloody carcass to City Hall and angrily slammed it against the building’s doors.”
YOU GO GIRLFRIEND! Do you know how mad our GIRLFRIEND must have been to pick up a rotting carcass, walk across the city with it and slam it against the door of city hall?! Police in Vermont just released surveillance video of the alleged perpetrator with a timeline of “one morning two weeks ago.” Obviously, Burlington, Vermont’s sense of urgency is skewed, which is infuriating when you look at their budget and how much (and how many) employees there are on the city payroll with a population of just over 42,000 people. The per capita income in Burlington is just $19,000 with men making 20 percent more than women. No wonder our alleged thrower was angry! Do your job people! She probably called the city several times to get the carcass removed and was ignored. Now, the police are looking for her. No leads apparently yet, but someone knows something. Take the article AP article, “Police in Vermont say a woman who might have been angry about a dead raccoon…”that “might have been hit on a nearby street…” and “the woman might have been upset no one from the city had come to collect it.”
I might think someone knows who she is and I might think she’s got a lot of people privately applauding her. What I find laughable (that means not funny) is that the police want to charge her with vandalism and they say she created “a public health hazard.” What did the city create by leaving it on the road?
A good lawyer could argue that the dead raccoon became the property of the city the minute it died on the city street and that the woman was simply returning it. So, in fact, she is owed an apology! I think she should sue.
