A city worker who deals in pest control feels his chest tighten whenever he recalls an agonizing drowning incident that came with the job.

“I had to watch a raccoon writhing in pain and fighting until its last breath,” the employee in Tomioka, Gunma Prefecture, said. “I harbored a desire to open the cage and let it go.”

Tomioka and other communities in the prefecture have increasingly been dealing with raccoons that damage crops and buildings. Exasperating the problem is trying to figure out a “humane” way of exterminating the animals.

In Tomioka, captured raccoons were typically put in a cage and dunked in a tank filled with water.

Desperate to breathe, the raccoon would open and close its mouth a few times before vomiting and becoming incontinent.

The city worker said he heard the sounds of the raccoon throwing itself against the cage. It sometimes took as long as five minutes for a raccoon to die in this method.

The animal’s swollen body was removed from the water, death was confirmed, and the lifeless raccoon was put in a bag.

The city no longer uses drowning to kill raccoons. It had also used electrocution as an extermination measure. The city employee still remembers the screechy sound the captured raccoon made when he applied the device to the animal.

“It was heart-wrenching each and every time,” the man said.

INVASIVE ALIEN SPECIES

The Environment Ministry categorizes raccoons as an “invasive alien species” that, in principle, should be exterminated.

In recent years, many local governments have struggled with the question of how to kill a captured raccoon with as little cruelty as possible.

Although the ministry has stated that drowning is not a proper way to kill raccoons, many local governments still resort to the method.

Some have tried other measures but not necessarily for the sake of animal rights.

Officials of Fujioka, a city located in the southwestern part of the prefecture and not far from Tomioka, began using asphyxiation in late July.

Fujioka residents have complained about raccoons damaging gardens, buildings and other property.

In fiscal 2019, 131 raccoons were captured in live cage traps. About 40 a month were snared in the summer.

Fujioka city officials used to drown the caged animals in irrigation channels and reservoirs. Other times, raccoons were left without food or water and rotted away in the cage.

“Drowning was relatively less painful because it kills the animal in a few minutes, while leaving a raccoon in the heat until it dies can take about half a day,” a city representative explained.

The city now forces the raccoons to breathe in carbon dioxide and die from suffocation to make them “suffer less,” the representative said.

The Fujioka government also decided to spare its employees from the slaughtering job.

Since April, a group of hunters has taken over the work. Residents can no longer rent cage traps from the city to catch raccoons.

Tomioka city has made similar changes.

In fiscal 2019, Tomioka stopped drowning raccoons and adopted the asphyxiation method.

A group of hunters was commissioned to do the work after the city government decided to ease the psychological burden on its employees.

FROM BELOVED RASCAL TO TROUBLEMAKER

Raccoons are indigenous to North America.

Twelve raccoons escaped from a zoo in Aichi Prefecture in 1962 and became feral. They are believed to be the first wild raccoons in Japan.

In the late 1970s, an animation series based on Thomas Sterling North’s children’s novel “Rascal” became a big hit in Japan. Many raccoons were imported to fulfill the public’s desire to own the animal as a pet.

After the 1990s, the habitat range for raccoons in Japan notably expanded.

According to a survey conducted from 2010 to 2017 by the Environment Ministry’s Biodiversity Center of Japan, raccoons were confirmed living in the wild in Tokyo and all prefectures except for Akita, Kochi and Okinawa.

The farm ministry’s Wildlife Damage Prevention and Utilization Office said raccoons in 2000 caused 36 million yen ($340,000) in damage to agriculture. By 2011, the damage had increased more than tenfold to 383 million yen.

The damage amount was 375 million yen in 2018.

“Raccoons have high reproduction rates and outstrip our ability to catch them,” a farm ministry official said.

Local governments get rid of raccoons based on the Invasive Alien Species Law and the Wildlife Protection and Hunting Law.

The Environment Ministry said the number of raccoons captured under the Invasive Alien Species Law in fiscal 2016 was 35,000, up nearly 10 times from 3,800 in fiscal 2006.

The number of raccoons killed based on the Wildlife Protection and Hunting Law in fiscal 2006 was 6,200. The number increased to 15,000 in fiscal 2016.

Under the ministry’s guidelines, local governments are required to limit the raccoons’ suffering as much as possible when they are killed.

The guidelines also say “a regular method that is accepted socially” should be used.

Drowning and starvation are “not proper ways” because a raccoon “remains conscious for a long time until the moment of death,” a ministry official said.

The ministry’s “how-to” handbook recommends local governments use anesthesia and carbon dioxide to kill raccoons.

‘SOMEBODY’S GOTTA DO IT’

For the Tomioka city government, death by carbon dioxide had been the preferred method.
But after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, carbon dioxide tanks were in short supply, so the city resorted to drowning and electrocuting the critters.

The Ota city government in Gunma Prefecture decided to do away with drowning in fiscal 2017 and started using suffocation by carbon dioxide.

But the supposedly “less cruel” extermination method did not ease the psychological burden of city employees assigned to kill the raccoons.

Typically, employees load a caged raccoon in a car and drive to a city-owned storage facility containing the tools needed to kill the animal.

The employees use the car as a screen while they destroy the captured raccoon in a space between the vehicle and the storage space.

“The work has to be done in an out-of-sight location,” an employee said.

The tools used are a carbon dioxide tank, a hose and a plastic container that can enclose the raccoon cage. The lid of the container has two holes each 2 cm in diameter.

The employees put one end of the hose in one of the holes while oxygen is expelled from the other hole.

Once the caged raccoon is placed in the container, the lid is closed and carbon dioxide is injected from the tank. The employees gradually increase the concentration of the gas.

“Sometimes I hear a raccoon moving around for a while,” the employee said. “I guess it ramps around.”

It takes 15 to 20 minutes for a raccoon to die in the container. The employees then pull out the body and clean the container.

The entire procedure takes about 30 minutes.

“We can’t see the (raccoon) during the process, so it’s a little easier for us psychologically, I guess,” the employee said. “Still, I don’t know if this is the best way to do it. I’m sure raccoons still feel pain.”

The job can be so emotionally taxing that some city workers in the past were sent over the edge, the employee said.

“I think each of my colleagues keeps something deep inside their soul. This is something we can’t easily talk about with our families,” the employee said. “But all of us are working very hard to do the task with a sense of mission. It impacts our ecosystem, too. As long as there is a resident having a trouble with (raccoons), somebody’s gotta do it.”

NOT A CUSHY JOB

That sentiment is shared by a worker in Tokyo who exterminates raccoons with carbon dioxide.

“My heart aches every time. It doesn’t matter how many times I have done it before,” he said. “But this is my job, so I just have to do it.”

Typically, he is hired at the very last minute. He makes several thousand yen per killing, after sending a bill to the municipal office each month.

“Frankly speaking, it’s not really a cushy job,” he said.

Takuya Kato, a lecturer at Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University who studies how raccoons live, said that drowning is not a humane way to kill the animals.

“Some say suffocation by carbon dioxide works differently depending on the size of the animal and involves distress,” he said. “In some cases, bloodletting and beating to death are used. But we should not use any method that we humans associate with pain and suffering.”

Kato, however, warns the public not to put the blame on those whose job is to kill raccoons.

“They do it for the public good. We should think about how to take account of animals’ lives as well as how to relieve the workers’ burden.”