Raccoon unfazed by cop's Taser during wild chase

[October 24, 2008]  DALLAS (AP) -- Police learned something during a frenetic burglary call to an elderly couple's home: Tasers don't work on raccoons. Police arrived with guns drawn after receiving a 911 call from an 85-year-old man who heard noises near his front door Tuesday night. Officers surrounded the house but pretty quickly -- in the words of the police report -- "determined the suspect was a raccoon."

In the meantime, the masked burglar apparently made its way into the house through the chimney. And that's when things got really interesting.

With officers in pursuit, the raccoon took off through the house, ripping up Venetian blinds, pulling down drapes, knocking over a lamp and toppling a flowerpot. Finally, Officer Daniel Ek tried to let it out the back door when the suspect apparently turned threatening.

"While unlocking the back door, the suspect ran at Officer Ek," the police report says.

Ek used his taser, but the raccoon ran up the chimney with the stun gun's prongs in its back. An animal control officer tried unsuccessfully to flush it out with ammonia, homeowner Bill Hyde said in Thursday's editions of The Dallas Morning News.

A neighbor helped secure the front of the fireplace to keep the raccoon from returning. The next morning, when the neighbor returned to put a cap on the chimney, the raccoon had escaped.

"He got away clean," Hyde said.

[Associated Press]

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