A Permit for a Pet Raccoon. The Rabies Rulebook Has No Box for One.

The raccoon has been furniture in Texas statute since 1975. It sits in a list of eleven fur-bearing animals in Section 71.001 of the Parks and Wildlife Code — beaver, otter, mink, ring-tailed cat, badger, skunk, raccoon, muskrat, opossum, fox, nutria — and Section 71.004 says nobody may take, sell, purchase or possess one in this state except as a commission proclamation allows. A landowner or an agent may take an animal that is damaging the property. Keeping one in the house for company is not on the list.

House Bill 1090, filed Thursday by state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, would add the missing category. The bill creates a new Chapter 72 in the Parks and Wildlife Code, titled, in the unglamorous way statutes are titled, the Pet Raccoon Permit.

The machinery is familiar from other state licensing programs and it is not cheap in effort. A permit runs one year and can be renewed. An applicant has to finish a raccoon ownership course approved by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission and pay an application fee that the commission sets by rule, since the bill does not name a number. The department would also have to run a public awareness program explaining what the permit requires.

Where the animal comes from is tightly drawn, and this is the part that separates the bill from a shopping trip. A permit does not authorize taking a raccoon, and under new Section 72.101 one may be acquired only from a person authorized to rescue or rehabilitate raccoons in Texas, a person licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to breed them, or another permit holder. Pulling a kit out of a live trap behind the shed would not be a legal route to pet ownership.

Holders would owe veterinary care, including administration of vaccines "for rabies and other communicable diseases as required by commission rule," plus shelter, food, water and enrichment. Breeding is prohibited unless the holder is separately authorized by USDA. Game wardens and designated department employees could inspect the premises, generally no more than once a year except after a complaint or an alleged violation, and could seize an animal on probable cause and assess an administrative penalty of up to $1,000 to recover the cost.

Then there is Section 72.003, which would stop cities and counties from adopting or enforcing any ordinance stricter than the state chapter or the commission's rules. Houston's or Harris County's ability to add conditions on a permitted raccoon owner would be constrained if the bill passes as written. It takes effect Sept. 1, 2027, and only if the 90th Legislature sends it to the governor first.

The rabies side is where the bill meets a document it cannot amend. Texas recorded 456 rabid animals in 2025 out of 10,470 specimens tested, a 4 percent positive rate and an 11 percent rise from 412 cases in 2024, according to the Department of State Health Services. Raccoons accounted for 22 of them, exactly double the 11 confirmed in 2024, behind 226 bats and 118 skunks. DSHS lists raccoons among the animals Texas law treats as high risk, alongside bats, skunks, foxes and coyotes.

What DSHS does not offer is a way to watch one for ten days. Its rabies guidance carries a sentence in capitals that reads: "THE TEN-DAY OBSERVATION PERIOD IS NOT VALID FOR ANIMALS OTHER THAN DOGS, CATS, AND DOMESTIC FERRETS BECAUSE NO INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE AS TO WHEN VIRUS IS EXCRETED IN THE SALIVA OF OTHER ANIMALS." For a dog that bites someone, the animal can be confined and observed. For a permitted raccoon, the same bite means the animal is euthanized and tested, and the person on the other end starts post-exposure prophylaxis or does not, on a physician's judgment.

The vaccination duty in the bill runs into the same wall. The state's own vaccination language covers dogs and cats by requirement and ferrets, wolf-dog hybrids and livestock by recommendation. A raccoon is not on that list, and the bill leaves the specifics to rules the commission would write after passage — which means whoever drafts them has to answer what product, if any, satisfies a statutory rabies vaccination requirement for Procyon lotor.

The bill is a shell until the session starts. No fiscal note is attached, no appropriation for the course or the permit system appears in the text, and the fee is left to a commission that will not vote on it until 2027 at the earliest. What the text does settle is narrower and more useful: it says plainly that the state would rather license a raccoon in a house than pretend the animal stopped being a rabies risk when it walked through the door.