{"id":76800,"date":"2018-02-13T09:40:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T16:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-family-finds-rare-animal-an-albino-raccoon\/"},"modified":"2018-02-13T16:40:50","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T16:40:50","slug":"durango-family-finds-rare-animal-an-albino-raccoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-family-finds-rare-animal-an-albino-raccoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango family finds rare animal: An albino raccoon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Albino
Albino raccoons are extremely rare in the wild, in part because they are more easily spotted at night by predators. A family south of Durango found a deceased one last week.<\/span>Courtesy of Shanan Robinson Malone<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The chances of being struck by lightning? 1 in 280,000.<\/p>\n

The chances of spotting an albino raccoon? 1 in 750,000.<\/p>\n

Yet, last week, a La Plata County family found a rare albino raccoon, albeit dead, on their property south of Durango, out on Florida Mesa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just didn\u2019t look like anything we had seen before,\u201d said Shanan Robinson Malone.<\/p>\n

Malone\u2019s dogs found the animal carcass Thursday while playing outside. When her husband, Robert, took a closer look, he at first couldn\u2019t tell what kind of animal it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe (Robert) just had a strange look on his face,\u201d Malone said.<\/p>\n

The family suspected it was an albino raccoon, but its large size (estimated at 35 pounds) and facial features caused them to second guess the species.<\/p>\n

Malone posted some photos to the Durango Colorado On-Line Garage Sale Facebook group, eliciting a flurry of speculations.<\/p>\n

Some people surmised it was a possum, or a fox, or something called a \u201craccoon dog.\u201d A few even thought it could have been the legendary folklore creature chupacabra.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the family took the animal carcass to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife office in Durango looking for a professional opinion.<\/p>\n

Matt Thorpe, wildlife manager, confirmed: albino raccoon. Any confusion about the animal\u2019s species, he said, was likely because the animal had been dead for a while.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty unusual for us to see them,\u201d Thorpe said. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The
The animal\u2019s hands and feet were clear signs that it was an albino raccoon.<\/span>Courtesy of Shanan Robinson Malone<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Albino raccoons are especially uncommon because raccoons, being nocturnal, rely on their gray and black coat to hide from predators.<\/p>\n

An oft-cited article from Wide Open Spaces, an online hunting and fishing publication, includes a comment from the Indiana Division of Fish and Wildlife that says spotting an albino raccoon is rarer than being struck by lightning.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany wildlife biologists around the nation agree that albinism occurs in about one (out of) every of 750,000 raccoons,\u201d the post says. \u201cAlso, very few survive in the wild as they cannot successfully hide from predators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thorpe said the raccoon found outside of Durango was probably dead for a week. There were no obvious signs of how the animal died, and too much time had passed since it was deceased to justify sending it off to be tested.<\/p>\n

Thorpe said he was aware of only one other report of an albino raccoon in the time he\u2019s worked at CPW.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a call about a year or two ago,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople were freaked out about it, but it occurs naturally in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, several residents shared stories of similar run-ins with the supposedly evasive creature, and some even shared photos on The Durango Herald\u2019s Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Herald photographer Jerry McBride snapped a photo of what appeared to be an albino raccoon in 2006 while on a hike in the Hermosa area. The raccoon was seen climbing a tree with another raccoon that had normal coloring.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"An
An albino raccoon climbs a tree near Hermosa.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

dead on property south of town<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,4259,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-76800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter-sign-up","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76800"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=76800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}