Nicholas Foti and two pals accused of killing a raccoon with a baseball bat and machete

There's a reason raccoons wear masks. They're natural bandits. But there's a better way of dealing with such a rapscallion than beating him to death with a bat and then skewering him with a machete -- which is precisely what three students, including Nicholas Foti (whose Facebook page features some graphic hunting photos), are accused of doing.

The only photo album on the Facebook page belonging to Foti, a CU-Boulder sophomore, pertains to hunting, with two of the pics featuring a kill. Here they are:

Another kind of hunt took place on November 7 on the 1000 block of 11th Street in Boulder. On that date, three nineteen-year-olds the Boulder Police Department has ID'd as Foti, fellow CU student August Noble and Lucas Holton, who attends reportedly attends Front Range Community College, were seen by witnesses killing a raccoon using a baseball bat and a machete.

According to the BPD, Foti said the raccoon was targeted because it had been getting into their trash cans. He told cops he hit the animal harder than he intended, at which point he and his compatriots decided to put it down.

Whether this last action was merciful, or even necessary, is open to debate. The police note that a necropsy on the raccoon performed by a Colorado State University vet determined that it had died of blunt-force trauma, presumably rendering additional stabbing unnecessary.

Foti, Noble and Holton were arrested and taken to jail on Wednesday for investigation of felony animal cruelty -- leaving their trash at least temporarily unguarded. Other raccoons, take note.

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More from our Colorado Crimes archive: "Joan Zalk, yoga instructor, charged with animal cruelty for walking chihuahua while driving car."