Austin firefighters use Jaws of Life on a tree to free raccoon with its head stuck
Firefighters in Austin, Texas, climbed a ladder and used a hydraulic spreader – the Jaws of Life – to widen a tree hollow and free a raccoon that had got its head stuck. It looked lifeless afterwards, but it was just exhausted.
Most emergency calls are about people. This one, in Austin, Texas, was about a raccoon’s bottom.
A neighbour called 911 after spotting a raccoon high up a tree with its head wedged firmly in a hollow. Austin firefighters turned up with ladders and the kit they normally use to cut people out of crashed cars.
Stock photo: a raccoon in a tree hollow in Colorado – not the actual raccoon. Photo: USFWS Mountain Prairie / public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).
One firefighter went up a ladder and used a hydraulic spreader – the tool better known as the Jaws of Life – to prise the hole in the tree wider, so the raccoon could finally pull its head out. Crews then lowered it to the ground with a catch pole.
AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
Video of the rescue showed the raccoon hanging limp and motionless, and worried viewers asked whether it had survived. The Austin Firefighters Association posted an update: “Raccoon rescue update: He’s OK!” He was “alive and unharmed”, it said – just “understandably tired” after a “long, stressful struggle” – and was handed over to Animal Control.
AI illustration.
The association said the job goes beyond fighting fires, “even when the one in trouble has four legs and a furry tail.”
Stock photo: an Austin fire engine in 2012 – not the crew involved. Photo: J.Köster / CC BY 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
Reported by UPI (Ben Hooper), KXAN and FOX 7 Austin, from posts by the Austin Firefighters Association.
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