When people request assistance with wildlife problems, today’s law enforcement officials rely less on tranquilizer guns and more on the quick takedown power offered by electronic control devices like the Taser. For example, when Neva Larson summoned Missoula County, Mont., sheriff’s deputies because a mule deer had its antlers entangled in a child’s rope swing in her backyard, the officers decided the best course of action was to “tase” the animal and then remove the rope. It worked. “The deer just dropped,” said Larson, “It was pretty slick.”

Tasers don’t always work as expected, however. In Dallas, Texas, police responding to a call of burglary in progress soon determined the suspect was a raccoon. The cops tried chasing the furry intruder out an open door, but it tore through the residence instead, knocking down lamps and ripping apart drapes before an officer shot it with his Taser. Unfazed, with the stun-gun prongs still in its back, the coon scurried into the fireplace and up the chimney, where it escaped.

And how does a stun gun work on a 450-pound wild boar? Not very well as Hernando County, Fla., sheriff’s deputy Joseph Tibor learned while trying to incapacitate a big-tusked hog tearing up a resident’s yard. Tibor nailed the huge swine with his Taser, but as eyewitness Darrell Plank said, “It didn’t do no good.” Plank, an avid hog hunter, later caught the pig with a tool that’s much less high tech — a rope — and now has the rogue beast in custody.