Helping a Tanuki

[Zasso Nouka]

We have a little female tanuki that lives around our farm and she generally amuses herself pottering around looking for grubs and generally doing tanuki kind of stuff. We don't mind her eating the occasional cob of sweetcorn or off cuts of vegetables and it's nice to see her from time to time but she's lost all of her hair and was really cold this winter, we could even see her shivering sometimes which was a truly pitiful sight.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions one what we could do to help her ? I think it might be mange and read that FrontLine Plus can kill most mites but how to get it onto her ? Or are there other options anyone has heard of ? Getting her to a vet would be problematical to say the least as although sh isn't totally scared of us she isn't tame either. I know that Ivermectin can be used to treat mites but not sure if you can buy it in Japan. Any suggestions gratefully received.

[gonbechan]

Tanuki in Japan suffer from cyclic outbreaks of sarcoptic mange caused by a mite.. also commonly known as scabies.. (just saying)
Sadly helping the tanuki (unless you are as tenacious as fuck) is pretty much impossible.

You would have to dip the tanuki into scabicide solution once a week over about a 6 week period.
You could try asking your local vet if he has an oral treatment (there are some) and you could put out food for the tanuki on a regular basis and when she is used to being fed, add the medicine.
Heartworm medicine (moxidectin) can work for sarcoptic mange but its rather spendy in Japan. Not sure how many doses you would have to give the tanuki, but heartworm tablets for 1 summer for 1 medium dog can cost over 1man.

The biggest problem is that there is obviously an outbreak in your area. You might cure the tanuki and then she would just get reinfected as she picks up eggs in the area.

[Zasso Nouka]

Thanks Gonbechan

I think dipping the poor thing might be out of the question but over the last few years she has sort of come to tolerate us and doesn't run away unless we try to directly approach her. Just the other day I could hear snoring coming from our sweetcorn patch and she was happily sleeping in there without being bothered by us going past all day long so there is a potential from getting quite close and maybe dropping some Frontline Plus onto her.

Will also ask our vet about oral treatments and see if that is an option

[gonbechan]

Frontline plus might help manage the mange but i think you would need to do several applications.
I am guessing that after one catch and splash, the tanuki is going to give you a wide berth.
You can also try Revolution , it is more broad spectrum than Frontline PLus.

[Zasso Nouka]

Great find Gonbechan

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Maybe I can sneak up on her if she's snoring in the sweetcorn patch again on drop some on her

[gonbechan]

Yeah .. i don't see why not. And since you say she is pretty bald, you won't even have to part the fur to put it on.

That site is much cheaper than getting stuff from the vet. Especially for ppl with dogs who need heartworm (filaria) medicine, which can set you back quite a bit if you have big dogs.(or many little ones)

[Zasso Nouka]

Every time I come back to this thread I start uncontrollably itching

[gonbechan]

its the mention of scabies that did it.
I also suddenly got itchy as soon as I mentioned it.

[Zasso Nouka]

A quick update. We've now got to the point where s/he is coming to the back of our house nearly every day for a small plate of dog biscuits and will tolerate us getting within a few metres while s/he feeds. S/he comes at different times during the day so we don't always see him/her but the biscuits disappear and we know our cats don't eat them. Hopefully in another few months we will be able to apply some miticide.

[Zasso Nouka]

And here's a picture, it's not very good as it is at the maximum zoom for my keitai.



As you can see s/he is in pretty bad shape but will be interesting to see how s/he transforms once we can get some medicine on him/her.