Racoons

I think that we have finally got control of our raccoon problem. It has been a war this year and now that we have the trap we are winning. It has taken some time though. They have won most of the battles killing chickens, rabbits and quail.

The trap is a humane live trap, I don't want to cause any animal pain, even though they have tortured most of my animals. Once they are caught we call animal control to come and take it. They tell me that they euthanize the animals but I am very suspicious of that. For some reason the same number of raccoons keep showing up. A mom and 2 babies and a male. We have caught 5 raccoons and they do all look alike. I am sure that the markings are different for each animal but I am not interested in getting that close. They are very angry little beasts.

One night we heard an incredible amount of noise. Rushing out to the back yard in our night clothes we found the mother in the trap and three babies in the tree. The babies were calling to their momma and it was very heart breaking moment. My husband was able to climb into the tree and catch one of the babies with a gloved hand. Of course I stood at a distance giving directions. "Just treat it like a cat and scruff it honey!" My poor husband will do any thing for me.

We know that there is at least one more raccoon that we have seen but not caught yet. The difficult part is that once those raccoons are caught more will move into the empty space. We hope that we have secured our cages well enough that the new ones will not learn that our yard is an all you can eat buffet.