The Zombie Raccoon Apocalypse

In this episode, Dr. Cliff introduces his podcast and discusses the zombie raccoon apocalypse. He explains that raccoons infected with the distemper virus exhibit unusual behavior, such as being active during the day and approaching humans without fear. He emphasizes the importance of reporting and euthanizing infected raccoons to prevent the spread of the disease. Dr. Cliff also answers a listener's question about cat food and diabetes, recommending a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. He concludes with a random rant about doctors prescribing medication without considering lifestyle changes.

First, if you haven't watched my film and live in Canada (or have one of those VPN things), you can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/oMUx3yuyznc?si=oagpg7bGnpbuyXlJ

Be sure to follow me on Instagram @drcliffworldwidevet.com and on Twitter at @drcliff_vet
Listener questions, episode suggestions, or if you have a good idea for a guest, email me at dr.redford@vet905.com
Additional information can be found at drcliff.ca

Transcript

Dr. Cliff Redford (00:05)
Good day everyone and welcome to episode one of VetLife with Dr. Cliff. Obviously I am Dr. Cliff. This is the last time I'll probably tell you guys that. I'm sure you could figure it out. And thanks to all my, probably not so many listeners on this first episode, but hello to the future listeners. Maybe one day I'll be big and famous and people will go back in time and find and reach out to the original podcast.

Episode one and go, man, it wasn't very good. but that's okay. So for, I'm going to speak out into the future for all you future listeners. Thank you for joining us. for my grandchildren. what are they going to call me? I guess it's going to be, it's not going to be like pop pop or anything like that. I guess if it's, if it's a Demetri's child, my, my stepson, he he'll probably call me a Papu because that's Greek for grandpa.

but for my kids, my three kids for their, their children, they'll probably just call me grandpa cliff. Cause they call my dad, grandpa Ross. Anyways, thank you to the future listeners and to the, robot AI overlords that might be, running this country and running this world one day. I hope you like this podcast and please be nice to me and to my kids. what do you guys think of that music that's starting music was from my buddy Merco?

Merko lives in Germany. He was a client here in Markham at Wellington Vet Hospital, My Animal Hospital. For a while we've become good friends and I've been helping him out with his cat who had diabetes twice that we've been able to cure. We're gonna talk about that later on. But his band, his guitarist created that riff called Cliff's Riff. So their band is called Bottom of This. Check them out on Instagram, Bottom of This. Thank you very, very much.

Now, as far as this podcast, I do want to do a shout out to Kyle. Kyle is, we've become good friends. Kyle is a nutrition and health expert and he has this amazing podcast called feel goodery. so check it out on all your podcast channels, feel goodery with Kyle. And, he kind of helped me get all this setup going and, and do the audio on Riverside FM. And then through buzzsprout, we get it through all the different podcast channels.

it's a great podcast. one of the things I like about it is it's simple. It's fast. It's 15, 20, 25 minutes. he's generally speaking with himself. So, after me talking with Kyle for a while, I decided, I think I just want to talk to myself for a while. but I'm good at that. So, this podcast is going to be, it's going to be about the vet life, what it's like being a veterinarian. but also talking about obviously animal health.

topics, maybe diseases, maybe medications, new medications, new research, but there's going to be some conversations with people that aren't in the animal health world. And there's going to be some conversations for myself, including the occasional random rant section where I talk about things that maybe bug me or opinions. And I do have opinions and they're, they're often a little annoying or controversial. My kids say I can be a bit of an a -hole sometimes.

they're not wrong. but, you know, being a veterinarian isn't always about being a veterinarian. You know what I mean? So we gotta, we gotta expand our horizons. and I guess, you know what, that's a nice little segue into talking about my opinion. The, the things I'm going to be talking about, even the animal health stuff are my opinions. and while I will be talking about research and talking about facts by no means should this be replacing the recommendations of your veterinarian. so.

yeah, speak to your veterinarian. Always follow their instructions. please don't say, well, I heard this guy, Dr. Cliff on, on a podcast and he says I should do this. they're going to end up sending me some nasty messages. send me questions. there are going to be listener questions and I do want to answer them. They don't always have to be animal health related. Send me any questions, whatever you want. the more entertaining, the better, of course. but I can make them entertaining, but.

Again, I am legally obligated to tell you that these are my opinions and they're not meant to override those of your veterinarian. All right, so today we are going to talk about the zombie virus in raccoons, this zombie raccoon apocalypse. So imagine you're going out at night, it's dark, you're taking out the garbage and you hear a little noise beside you.

And you quickly jump to the side and you, you hear this kind of growl, hissy noise and you see the glowing eyes and there's this beast crawling down from a tree that it was sitting up in, or maybe it was, it was hiding on the other side of your car. and this thing hisses at you and shows you it's fangs and it's very sharp teeth and it's very long claws and nimble fingers. And then it scurries away. Well, that is not a zombie raccoon.

That's just a regular raccoon and that's how they behave. The issue with this sort of air quotes zombie raccoon apocalypse is the fact that we are now seeing in cities across North America and a little bit in Europe, a huge increase of raccoons that are coming out during the daytime and they should not be. You should not be seeing raccoons occurring when it is bright and sunny. And.

You basically, these raccoons are calm. They're not afraid of you. They're actually kind of intrigued by you. They may take food from your hand and you're going to see some Instagram videos. There are already a bunch out there of these cute raccoons being fed and how they're coming every single day to see what's going on. And they almost seem calm around you.

Well, those are the zombie raccoons. The issue is, is they have distemper. Distemper is a virus that we know specifically in dogs because we do vaccinate dogs for it. It is a virus called canine morbilla virus and it can affect all kinds of animals. But as far as the raccoons, it eventually, and we'll talk about some initial signs, but it eventually causes this confused state.

and this lack of fear. So all those cute Instagram videos, it doesn't matter what nice lovely music is put beside it. That is likely a sick raccoon. They should not be friendly with people and they're wild animals and you should really only see them from a distance with the glowing eyes at night or at least at dusk and at dawn. So distemper virus starts off as a respiratory infection.

Infection in raccoons, you know, runny nose, watery eyes. They get these sort of goopy eyes, what's called conjunctivitis. And that's usually the most visible symptom that we see as like a lay person. Eventually they can get pneumonia. They get really thin. They get really debilitated and they can obviously start to develop diarrhea. And that's something you might notice. And then near this final stage of the disease.

The raccoon begins to wander aimlessly, sometimes in a circle. They're disoriented, unaware of their surroundings, much like this sort of zombie behavior that we think about without them saying brains, brains. They can eventually even suffer paralysis and get severe damage to the brain. Now, a lot of these symptoms are indistinguishable from rabies.

So a lot of people worry about these raccoons having rabies and raccoons can get rabies, but distemper virus is much more common. And the thing with rabies in raccoons is it's really only a neurological disease. So basically any raccoon you see, and especially if it's not afraid of you, stay away from it. Don't wait to see if it bites you. If it has rabies and it bites you, you need to go to the doctor.

and we'll do another episode in the future about when I almost got bit by a rabid dog in India. now I had my rabies vaccine. If he had a bit me, I still would have gone and got the antitoxin and done all the necessary steps. So if you, if your children, please talk to your children, if they ever get bit by an animal, they need to let their parents know you guys need to have that conversation with them. And if you get bit, and you don't know if that animal has its rabies vaccine.

whether it maybe it's a cat or a dog, you need to speak to a public health official immediately. You need to contact your doctor immediately. So back to distemper. Distemper is different in raccoons and rabies because of these upper respiratory signs, because of the diarrhea, because of the thinness. They have this swollen bum kind of situation called a blown out bum. Hopefully you never get close enough to see that.

But it is a different disease. Now it can be transmitted to other animals through airborne droplets, through direct contact with bodily fluids, saliva, raccoon droppings. Now it is not a danger to people though, but it is a danger to dogs. So please keep your animals away from these raccoons. That's a good rule anyways. Now,

They are still a danger to people just not through this direct virus. So again, as they're confused and they're wandering aimlessly, they lose their fear of us. They develop poor eyesight due to conjunctivitis, this inflammation of the tissue around the eyes. And they have this general poor health and weakness. And they sort of become unable or disinterested in fleeing. And they're gonna bite you.

If you get close, they're going to bite you. All of a sudden that wild state comes out and they're going to bite you. I had a raccoon that I found up on our roof, last year. there's a little video on my Instagram at Dr. Cliff worldwide bet. and it was trying to, to chew through the screen door of my stepson's window. and I was able to go up. I was able to trap it under a, under a coat.

And then bring it to the wildlife sanctuary that I work at that I volunteer out once a week. I knew this thing had to stemper, and we unfortunately had to euthanize it, but I was able to catch it because I have experienced, I deal with a lot of wild animals. And again, I've got my rabies vaccine and I know how to, how to take care of myself in that small chance that it is, that is something other than to stemper.

So it is a serious disease. The media has done a great job in sort of click baiting the stories with this zombie raccoon apocalypse. And let's be honest, I did it with my own podcast here as well. But the reality is, is anything that can get people interested in realizing that this disease is happening is an issue. And it is becoming more common.

we have sort of encroached more and more onto their territory as well as the fact that I think this is anecdotal, this is my opinion, but I think since the pandemic and I'm not an anti -vaxxer, I did get vaccinated. I'll be honest, I don't know if I'm gonna be getting boosters. We know a lot more now than we did three years ago or whenever the vaccines were done. So, but.

A lot of people have become vaccine hesitant, even if you're not an anti -vaxxer, you've become vaccine hesitant. And unfortunately, again, anecdotally, I think that has crossed into the animal world and a lot more people are coming to us with their dogs and saying, I just want rabies. I just want the absolute minimum. And although veterinarians consider distemper and parvovirus and depending on where you live, Lyme vaccine or leptospirosis, all these different vaccines, hepatitis.

A lot of them are, we still consider them core. I consider distemper parvovirus a core vaccine because it is a real problem in dogs. But unfortunately we are seeing people that are requesting less and less vaccines. So my guess is, or my deduction, it's not an assumption, there's some education behind it. My deduction is that one of the reasons we're seeing more distemper in raccoons is it's also occurring more in the canine population.

Now the big problem is there's no cure for this in raccoons. there's a minor cure or there's certainly a lot we can do regarding symptomatic treatment and dogs and dogs can live with it and we can eventually clear the virus from them. but rack, raccoons cannot live with this and they will eventually die. There is no treatment and it will be a long drawn out, horrible death. And in the meantime, we're talking months here. And in the meantime,

They're spreading it to other raccoons. So if you see a raccoon that you think has distemper, you need to contact your animal control. And yes, unfortunately, if this raccoon does have distemper, they're going to humanely euthanize it. But that death is going to be a lot more smoother and a lot more peaceful and a lot more humane than if they were to die sick and in discomfort and in the meantime spreading this disease everywhere.

So during my research for this podcast, I did a bit of a deep dive about where raccoons live. I don't even know. I mean, I know they're obviously in Toronto, which is where this podcast is being recorded. Shout out to my friends in Scarborough. But, you know, and I knew it was throughout North America, but I didn't know if it was in Europe. And the fact is it is. There's this amazing history that I won't get into too much detail.

That it's been all throughout Central America, like all the way down to Central America, all throughout certain places in the West Indies, Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados. They ended up being hunted and killed and, and purposely made extinct in those West Indies islands. There's been places all throughout Canada, obviously. And the numbers have just grown and grown and grown.

By the 1980s, there were 20 times more raccoons in North America than in the 1930s. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out it's because of the human population exploding. Raccoons are incredibly intelligent and incredibly adaptive. And if you have a city, they're happy to sleep under your deck, sleep in your attic, sleep in your shed.

and find all these places in your garage to, or in your backyard to sleep. And then they raid your garbage. That's why we call them trash bandits. So if you, if you don't hunt them, I'm not saying you should, if you don't hunt them and you have food and, and, and shelter sources, for an intelligent animal, like a raccoon, they're going to explode in population. But the cool things I found out is that there's places throughout like Asia.

that that raccoons have been discovered. In about between 1936 and 1958, for the purpose of establishing a population to be hunted for their fur, 1240 raccoons were released in nine regions of the former Soviet Union. They talk about Belarus between 54 and 58, Azerbaijan 41 to 57 and in

Like in 1974, they had a seasonal hunt of a thousand to fifteen hundred animals every year. And the estimated size at that point where they're doing this hunting in the Caucasus region was around twenty thousand animals or four animals per square kilometer. Here's a really interesting, kind of sad, but I still find interesting story.

In Japan, up to 1500 raccoons were imported as pets each year after the success of the anime series Rascal the Raccoon in the late 70s. In 2004, the descendants of discarded or escaped raccoons lived in 42 of the 47 prefectures. And then by 2008, all raccoons were found in all 47 prefectures of Japan. They do incredible amounts of damage.

to agriculture and obviously they're just not supposed to be there. I think it would be amazing, quite interesting to do some sort of cool graphic novel or a new anime series, as long as people don't then get raccoons as pets, but a new anime series that's like dark and gritty of all the different raccoons in the different regions of the world speaking with different accents or languages.

knowing different martial arts and they could tie it back into the origin story of all these different releases for hunting purposes, for pets, for places to enrich the fauna, which is the Prussian hunting office said they were releasing them to enrich the fauna. And then in Germany, there was a bunch of raccoons that escaped from a fur farm in 1945.

and because of the Bayless Ascaris, roundworm infection, which is a, a parasite that can affect their brains, but can be spread to people. especially so if they have it and you get contact with your hands and it's microscopic and you don't wash your hands enough and you ingest it, these, these worms can damage your brain. There's some pretty tragic stories about out there about young children who.

failed to develop properly because of this Bayless Ascaris parasite. But because of this worry and the fact that they are not meant to be there in Germany, there's always been this constant sort of culling or hunting going on. But it's just, it's absolutely fascinating and a little bit sad about this sort of invasive species. I'll definitely do a podcast about invasive species.

Not only through, you know, everyone knows of the story in Australia. it was done as a, a Simpsons, episode, but, there's invasive species all over the place. We've discovered, you know, the problems with them in Panama on our trips. My daughter and I went there and volunteered, three or four years ago. And then, in the various trips to the West Indies, there's been invasive species issues, killing off the, the native reptiles, et cetera, et cetera. keep your cats inside everybody.

Cats are assassins for sure. And that was the issue in Jamaica. So raccoons are amazing and they're intelligent and they're adaptive. And unfortunately they're living in places they weren't designed to. And unfortunately this zombie raccoon apocalypse is kind of upon us. And let's hope that let's hope that we can find a way to at least vaccinate them somehow with maybe a one day an oral.

Maybe an oral distemper vaccine can be created. They have oral rabies vaccines where they'll actually drop them out of airplanes. These little tiny pellets, that might say MNR on it, which is ministry of natural resources. And they're basically rabies vaccines for the foxes and whatnot. I wanted to find, so here's another thing I, I found out, you know, like foxes can get distemper and obviously dogs and different candid species.

and ferrets. So if you have a ferret as a pet, even if it doesn't go outside, it should get a distemper vaccine. But then also pinna pets can get it. And I'll be honest, I didn't know what a pinna pet is. pinna pet pinna means like sort of flipper. it's also the flap of the ear. but pinna is like flipper and then pet is foot, like a pedicure. So pinna pet. and so pinna pets can get this.

And we're talking about like seals and sea lions can actually get to stemper. I'll have to do some research later to find out what that, what those symptoms are. but hopefully we never see a zombie sea lion apocalypse. That would be pretty, pretty scary. for sure. So what do we do if we see a air quotes zombie raccoon, unfortunately report it.

it will be euthanized, but hopefully you'll be doing something to protect the population. Please get your dogs vaccinated and your cats for that matter, but they don't get vaccines for distemper. They can't catch it. and, and keep your, your pets away and your children and yourself from these, from these animals that are supposed to be wild, no matter how cute it is. And no matter how many, likes you think you're going to get on the Instagram. So.

Let's actually get to listener questions. So this question comes from my friend, Merko, in Germany. This is the first episode, so no one has sent me any questions. So send me in some questions. My email is on the information section of the podcast, but also you can email me at dr .redfordatvet905 .com or find me on Instagram at drcliffworldwidevet. So his question, hi bud.

I have two questions. In Germany, there are a lot of articles about the best nitrogen -free extract levels when it comes to cat food and diabetes to keep the carbs at a minimum. What's your view on that? And generally, is it okay now to go back to a mixed nutrition, dry and wet food for our tigers, which he means is two cats. So again, recognize that he has this one cat, Dexy. Dexy developed diabetes.

twice when he was in Germany after he'd become a client to mine but then moved. And I have a lot of experience and generally a very high success rate in curing diabetes in cats, as do most veterinarians. There's nothing special about me, regardless of what my mom says. And so we were able to get Dexy into remission. This was years and years ago. And then he developed the symptoms again. They checked his sugar. His sugar was elevated. He developed diabetes again years later.

And it took us about six weeks to get them back into remission and nutrition plays a key role. Once they've become diabetic, we don't always know why cats become diabetic. It's a little bit different than, than in people, and different than in dogs. We have yet to see a way to cure dogs, but now Dexie has been cured twice. He is no longer receiving insulin injections. He's no longer getting blood glucose testing at home. he's going to see his veterinarian regularly.

but nutrition plays a big role. Now I had never heard about this nitrogen free extract levels and the research I did on VIN, the vet information network, really just talked about nitrogen levels in fertilizer or in pig food. Obviously that's not what we needed. and now what I did find out though, is that you do ideally want to feed your diabetic or post diabetic cat, a canned food. and the reason is, is you're trying to get.

less than 6 % of the calories from carbohydrates. So a high protein, high fat meal. Cats are obligatory carnivores, meaning they have to eat meat. No vegan cats. Check out hashtag vegan cat, which Joe Rogan has taken over. It's hilarious and sad what, you know, I love vegans. I think it's great what's going on. That they're trying to protect animals. I'm a vegetarian, but your cat is not meant to be a vegan and it can cause major health issues.

But what I did, so what I did find out is that dry food, the problem with dry food is to make it have that kind of crunch, that hard texture, it has to have a high carbohydrate level or at least higher than 6%. So ideally all canned food or maybe a 50 50. And then I found a little bit of research about this nitrogen free extract level.

regarding labeling in Germany, but I need to do another sort of quick dive. So we're gonna talk about that in the next episode, because likely I still won't get any of your questions. Please send me your questions. But right now, you wanna ideally feed Dexie, your two tigers, if you can, canned food or a mix of canned and dry, but ideally canned food. And then I'll find out Mirko more about this nitrogen -free extract level and get you some more information on that.

So that's it, that's our first listener question. And I have now, Mirko has popped my cherry for listener questions. So the last thing I want to do is a little bit of a random rant. And again, this has nothing to do with being a veterinarian, but it does have some medical sort of links to it. My random rant is regarding my family doctor's

the way she's dealing with my very slightly elevated cholesterol level. So I get my cholesterol checked regularly every three months. I've got a history of heart disease in the family. I've got a history of pre -diabetes in the family. my sugars are great. And about six months ago, my cholesterol was a little bit higher by about 10 % higher than, than it should have been. so nothing significant, but it was higher and it was a trend, right? And you need to look at trends.

And I was able to drop it, through nutrition and shout out to Toronto boxing academy. I had my first, amateur boxing match. I won in second round TKO, master's amateur boxing match. And because of that, I was training hard and I was eating clean for a long time. no chips, no cookies, no popcorn, you know, just no garbage basically. Right. How do you get really good abs? Six reps or six sets, 10 reps.

of stop eating so much crap. That's basically the deal. Nutrition helps you lose weight and exercise helps you build muscle. And because of that, you know, my blood pressure dropped, my sugar levels dropped, my cholesterol dropped. And then I didn't have any more fights and I got a little bit lazy and complacent. And some of the other fights that were coming up had fallen through. So I started to eat junk food again.

So my cholesterol climbed a little bit. Now it didn't climb to what it was six months ago, but it did climb a little bit. So I finally talked to my doctor cause I had just turned 50. I went and saw my doctor. I hadn't seen her in a while and she expressed concerns, which I appreciate. And I said, what am I getting? So what are we going to do? And she said, well, I'm going to prescribe some, some statins for you. well, wait a minute. Like we haven't even talked about nutrition.

And she kind of said, do you really think you can lower the cholesterol level? Yeah, I can lower the cholesterol level. I did so previously. And she was really, she was really, I don't want to say excited, but she was really interested in, in, in, in prescribing these drugs. And so my rant is why, why are we as a society, and it's not all of us, obviously, why are we as a society so focused on pharmaceuticals and not.

sort of avoiding the disease or treating the disease. So I'm going to click in here statin side effects and let's see what comes up with headache, dizziness, feeling sick, whatever that means, feeling unusually tired or physically weak, digestive system problems such as constipation, diarrhea and indigestion or farting. Farting, okay, maybe I'm already taking statins. I don't know.

Sleep problems. Well, my wife has sleep problems because maybe I'm taking statins and I'm farting. I don't know. Muscle pain, low blood platelet count. And then this NHS website, which is a legit website, talks about up to 23 % of the people show these side effects. So now obviously this is better than dying. I don't want to die of a heart attack, but my cholesterol level is barely elevated.

And I've proven it can be done through other means. What I would like to see is a family doctor that would say, I don't like this trend. Dr. Cliff, I am a doctor, right? I don't like this trend. Here's some ideas you can do at home if you want to, you know, we're not in a major danger zone right now. All your other parameters are great. You train like a, like an Olympic athlete. That's what I like to tell myself. and, and, you know, maybe if it reaches point.

X, then we're gonna put you on statins. So, you know, she needs to hold me accountable and say, all right, let's check this again in three months. And if you have not dropped it by a certain amount, or if it reaches a certain amount, do you agree that you'll go on statins? I probably still wouldn't agree. I would just say I would be much more open to it. So the thing is, is these drugs are needed, but they're not.

Always needed and they're not, they shouldn't be that first line of defense. And I get it. A lot of people don't have the desire to diet or don't have the willpower. But you can't make that assumption, especially on someone that has shown that they can make themselves healthier through a healthier lifestyle. So.

To the physicians out there, you're probably not listening. I get it. I'm just a veterinarian and not a real doctor. I'm rolling my eyes right now. Can you hear it on the microphone? I get it. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're dealing with so many people, but please consider other options before medication when it is not an urgent crisis. And just work more with the patient. I almost said clients because I think of people as clients.

whereas the patient's the animal. Work more with the patient and try and educate them. I plan to be alive till I'm 100 years old. The last thing I want to do is spend the last 50 years on medication when I could maybe only spend the last 20 years on medication because I lived a better lifestyle and that's how I'm going to live to 100 years old. So that's my random rant and that's my podcast. Please follow, please share, please send me your listener questions.

Please give Kyle's feel good to repodcast some love and be kind to animals Be kind to each other and as always be kind to yourself Cheers