How to keep raccoons away

[The Rock Garden]

"Richard Cline" wrote

How do you know this - for sure? I'm not saying that this may not be the case somewhere but it sure would be the exception, plus being just plain stupid. Several miles from the capture point may be in my back yard and I (purely as an example) sure don't need any more coons who are into predation 'round these parts, plus the chance of importing various diseases such as scabies, parvo, rabies, etc. If you have a problem - deal with it - don't export it to another area for someone else to have to solve for you.

A retired game warden hunting buddy of mine used to get called out on road injured deer and every time there were yuppies and/or children involved he would tell them he was going to take the injured deer to the "deer hospital." Until they left the scene...

Skip

Skip & Christy Hensler THE ROCK GARDEN Newport, WA

[Doug Kanter]

Correct. I was mixing two ideas in too large of a bowl. :-)

[Ann]

Curiousity got the better of me ...

Safest is a battery-powered, pulsing (as opposed to continuous) electric fence controller bearing Underwriters Laboratories label ANSI/UL69 (Electric Rence Contollers) One town's regulations specified that the current pulse a maximum of 60 times a minute with the duration of each pulse a max of

1/10 second and be 25 milliamps or less. This is on the high side; the newer controllers have pulse duration around 1/1000 second. Voltages seem to run in the 5K-7K range. The shorter pulse duration also has the advantage of not heating dried vegetation to combustion temperature.

[JennP]

It's not unheard of. We had a baby raccoon trapped in our garage behind pegboard last summer. The town wouldn't touch the situation and referred us to a private contractor. Cost us $145 to have the guy take it out and release it in our yard.

BTW, after seeing how pi$$ed off that animal was, there's no way I'd try to release one from a trap myself. And this was a raccoon that was only about 3 months old. Better left to professionals.

[mark dunning]

I'd have spent a dollar on letting the car idle for a half gallon of gas, or so, then removed the carcass.....

Mark (just trying to save you $144 next time) Dunning

[charles krin]

reading in misc.rural.

fun part is that depending on how new the car is, that might not work. since about 1995, the car computers have been smart enough to stop the engine when the oxygen level falls below 16% or so...and with the modern cat cons, that might not have the carbon monoxide level high enough for more than a head ache.

ck

[Not Me]

| >Mark (just trying to save you $144 next time) Dunning | | reading in misc.rural. | | fun part is that depending on how new the car is, that might not work. | since about 1995, the car computers have been smart enough to stop the | engine when the oxygen level falls below 16% or so...and with the | modern cat cons, that might not have the carbon monoxide level high | enough for more than a head ache.

Actually the variation in O2 levels as controlled by the computer is not that great. Regardless it is the blood's affinity for CO that is the danger and CO levels way lower than can be minimally produced by an internal combustion engine are sufficient to kill after prolonged exposure. The key is time. I should also mention that CO is heavier than O2 so the atmosphere at the bottom of the rat hole will be have increasingly concentrated CO levels. If all else fails the critter will have one h*ll of a head ache.

[Tom Quackenbush]

C = 12, O = 16, N = 14

CO = 28, O2 = 32, N2 = 28

R, Tom Q.

[Not Me]

"Tom Quackenbush"

| > I should also mention that CO is heavier than O2 so the atmosphere | >at the bottom of the rat hole will be have increasingly concentrated CO | >levels. If all else fails the critter will have one h*ll of a head ache. | | C = 12, O = 16, N = 14 | | CO = 28, O2 = 32, N2 = 28

The real world physics/dynamics is not quite that simple but sufficient to say CO is heavier than air and will settle to the lowest level i.e. the bottom of the rat hole.

[HVAC IsFun]

I was in South Carolina once and the place i stayed at was near some woods. They had a big rubber snake outside all coiled up ..looked VERY real. They said it was to keep raccoons and other pests away. Dont know if it works...but maybe worth a try.

Dave

[Tom Quackenbush]

Are you sure you're not thinking of CO2?

Carbon monoxide is obviously lighter than air (but not by much). If you don't believe me, Google for "carbon monoxide lighter air".

R, Tom Q.

[Salty Thumb]

Tom Quackenbush wrote in news: [e-mail]:

If you work out Van der Waal's equation:

at 1 atm and 20C, I get

02 1 mol / 2.74 L N2 1 mol / 2.74 L CO 1 mol / 2.73 L CO2 1 mol / 2.49 L

making CO2 the most dense (unless I solved the equation wrong which is entirely likely: v^3 - bv^2 = av - ab - RT = 0).

The difference between CO and O2 doesn't seem remarkable enough to be significant, but I guess at greater concentrations it'd be workable. I think you'd be more likely to kill yourself than the rat, though.

[I'm not a chemist or physicist, so all this could a bunch of hokey.] (rec.gardens)

[Kelly E Jones]

Well, the way you're using it IS a bunch of hokey. You've calculated molar density, not mass density. That's equivalent to saying 100 bowling balls takes up more space than 100 baseballs, since a 'mole' is just a fixed number of atoms (somewhat more than a 'sh*tload'). It says nothing about which is 'heavier'. You're better off just ignoring molar density (as the previous poster did ) since, as you note, they're all pretty close, and just going with the mass density. CO2 is denser than 'air', and CO is slightly lighter.

Kelly

[William W. Plummer]

Brownian motion will cause gases to mix. You don't see the O2 and N2 that compose most of our "air" separating.

[Salty Thumb]

[e-mail] (Kelly E Jones) wrote in news:c950es$71o$1 @news01.intel.com:

100 bowling balls do take up more space than 100 baseballs, and the size of the molecules is something the Van der Waals equation takes into account that the Ideal Gas equation does not. (at STP the variation is not very significant, but if you use the ideal gas equation, obviously you get the same answer for every compound). [for people who don't remember their chemistry a mole is Avogadro's number of particles ~= 6.02 x 10^23]

If you take the molar density and multiply by the molecular weight, you get the mass density.

Assuming the numbers are right, oxygen has more mass density than carbon monoxide (but slightly less particle density). For purposes of asphixation, the CO vs O2 comparison is what matters.

I still can't work out how mass density is relevant when talking about gases or how adding atomic weights can give a correct indication of density or buoyancy. It would be akin to saying water floats on oil (obviously it doesn't), because water (1 + 1 + 16 = 18) is lighter than oil (say minimum of 2 H and 2 C = 26). To me it makes more sense (when talking about gases at least) to talk about particle density, but I'm not convinced particle density is the solution, either.

[Salty Thumb]

"William W. Plummer" wrote in news:yPntc.35081$af3.1824427@attbi_s51:

But isn't it true that there exists some "heavy" gas that will tend to collect at a lowest elevation? I don't remember exactly what carbon monoxide does, but it's possible that I've also heard that it sinks (compared to say something like helium which obviously wants to rise).

The question is whether CO is one of those gases.

[Kelly E Jones]

True!

Not really... O2 and N2 don't separate out - they form, effectively, a 'solution', so the density of 02 is not really relevant. It's the density of 'air' which matters, which is between the density of air and nitrogen (and closer to nitrogen).

Because mass density, coupled with gravity, is what causes bouyancy.

Because for most gases (at fixed temperature and pressure), the molar volume (molar density) is roughly constant, thus the molecular weight is a good indicator of the mass density, which determines bouyancy.

If we say that a mole of any gas occupies roughly 24 liters at STP, and a mole of gas weighs it's molecular weight in grams, then the density of any gas is proportional to it's molecular weight. The density of CO2 is thus about 44 grams per 24 liters.

No, gases and liquids are vastly different phases. The molar volume of most gases (at STP) is roughly the same; the molar volume of liquids can be orders of magnitude in difference.

Nope, not at all. Gravity doesn't care at all about particles, it only cares about mass...

Kelly

[Salty Thumb]

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

[e-mail] (Kelly E Jones) wrote in news:c956bi$a55$ [e-mail]:

[Tom Quackenbush]

I think there's something wrong with those numbers. 1 mole of (ideal) gas occupies 22.4 L @ STP. Your numbers should vary slightly.

Kelly's already done a bang-up job of explaining why you need to bring mass back into the picture.

R, Tom Q.

[Tom Quackenbush]

As I mentioned in my previous post, I think those volume figures are a little off.

According to my handy-dandy Pocket Ref, here are the densities (@ STP):

O2 1.4290 g/L N2 1.2506 g/L CO 1.2500 g/L CO2 1.9770 g/L Air 1.2928 g/L

Just as a sanity check, I multiplied each one of those figures by

22.4 to make sure that the product was close to the molecular mass (they are).

R, Tom Q.