Raccoons

[Carol Gravelle]

Hi,

Any suggestions how we can keep a motther raccoon and her three babies out of our yards and garbage containers?

Thanks.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Out of your garbage: Use bungee cords over the lids to the handles.

Out of your yard: There's this newfangled invention called a fence. Not perfected quiet yet, but you might be able to find someone in your area who will install one, on an experimental basis. Raccoons are great climbers, though.

[ron]

Where I come from the solution is a 12ga. shotgun, a good coon dog, and a big flashlight with fresh batteries. If that's not an option in your area ,trap them in a live trap and release them in the wild as far away from your house as you can get , but check with your Fish and Game Department first for the legalities of doing so.

[ron]

Where I come from the solution is a 12ga. shotgun, a good coon dog, and a big flashlight with fresh batteries. If that's not an option in your area ,trap them in a live trap and release them in the wild as far away from your house as you can get , but check with your Fish and Game Department first for the legalities of doing so.

[Ajanta]

: Any suggestions how we can keep a motther raccoon and her three : babies out of our yards and garbage containers?

Keep food, and food smells inaccessible to them. Platic bag your garbage tightly, keep the garbage can tightly closed. If they are merely exploring, they'll go away once they learn there is no possibility of food here.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Yeah, but then you have a worse problem: A dog.

[Jim Kingdon]

Get a better garbage container. The standard metal one with the tight fitting lid[1] might be enough. I don't think raccoons require the heavy duty ones like this:

(for those who aren't bothering with looking at the image, the web site name BearProofInc.com should provide a hint).

The raccoons should spend little/less time in your yard with no garbage to attract them. I'm not sure it would be easy (or necessary) to exclude them entirely.

[1]

[Charlie]

Keeping the garbage under lid and secured is good advice.

I had trouble with a possum, coon or cat (probably my own cat) ripping open the plastic bags once and went to digging around the garage and found an old can of lysol smelly spray crap that I thought I had pitched. I sprayed the outside of the bags with it and had no more problems. Perhaps some of the dog-no-pee-here stuff would deter them from the covered trash receptacles. Camo the garbage/food odor with something unpleasant to a coon.

Maybe urine? Don't know.

Charlie

[JoeSpareBedroom]

It's like the sun rising every day. :-)

[Eigenvector]

A shotgun

[David E. Ross]

My yard is completely fenced and walled. Raccoons still steal my entire grape crop (two vines).

[JoeSpareBedroom]

The bastards!

I'm dealing this week with deer, who've munched all the buds off one daylilly. The rest of the daylillies are now caged, which looks ugly as hell, but at least I'll get to enjoy a few flowers. The deer have also decimated two sedums, and are poking around the tomatoes, whose leaves they ate last year. Unfortunately for them, the tomatoes are caged for support, with another fence wire cage 2 feet outside the main one, prongs bent outward to cause maximum "education". We shall see.