the raccoon, redux
some of you might remember that last year, sometime in the fall, we had a bit of a raccoon issue. What you may not know is that it’s persisted, and our back porch has been a bit of a happy raccoon outhouse since the snow began to fall. I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of fond of my porch, and I’m definitely not so fond of raccoon “presents”.
Thinking it was gone (we hadn’t had any surprises in a while), we set up our porch for the summer, overflowing with herbs and plants and our favourite futon and candles and other fun stuff. So, imagine my surprise when I went to open the porch door one evening last week while I was prepping for ladyfest and came face to face with a 35lb raccoon. (I’ll give you a hint – both of us were not so happy, though only one of us slunk away with our tail between our legs).
Something needed to be done. So, this week, we’ve had a sortof humane (I say sortof because I think that even trapping them is cruel and makes them sort of crazy, but what do you do when they treat your porch like a giant litter box? That is surely not cool.) live-trap hanging out under our porch table, hoping that the raccoon would be enticed by some lovely cat food. Last night, around 2:30 am, it was. Delightful. Did I mention that I sleep next to the porch? Yeah. That was fun. 8 hours of clanging and clawing and desperate unhappiness later, the raccoon has been relocated to somewhere where I hope he’ll find plenty of snacks and no opposition from the humans in the neighbourhood.
This is what raccoons do to your stuff when they are scared and mad:
The moral of this story? Make sure your neighbours don’t leave 30lbs of dog food on their porch for the ENTIRE winter. Otherwise, well, yeah…
Trapping and relocating an animal isn’t a solution.
http://wildlifeproblems.ncf.ca/introduction.html
Plus, in Ontario, it is illegal to relocate an animal more than one kilometre from where it was originally trapped.
:( Poor raccoon and any possibly orphaned kits.
After removing what was bringing him here (and yes, it was a male raccoon, not a female), he was still returning. Consistently. Despite bright lights, despite radios, despite liberal use of ammonia, despite mothballs, and everything else the internet suggested to discourage raccoons from hanging out.
While trapping was not something that was ideal, and in part, I have little faith that we won’t see him again, we were assured that the company that was hired by our property management company to trap and remove followed all of the Ontario laws for animal trapping and relocation. So I don’t believe he’s gone too far, but I do believe that we did what we felt was necessary to end a recurring problem that was not stopping.
Do I feel terrible that the raccoon had to endure that ordeal? Yes. Awful actually. Do I also feel better that I am not going to be facing a pile of raccoon feces that was potentially harmful to my health every morning? Or a potentially rabid raccoon on my porch nearly every night? Or my neighbours (all 8 of them) facing any of these troubles? Yes.