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wendy2shoes

Raccoons! How I humanely evicted..

wendy2shoes
10 years ago

I'm in southern Ontario, a couple of blocks from a creek, and Lake Ontario. We have messy fishermen who leave salmon guts etc., so even though we keep our own garbage secure, the raccoons love our neighbourhood. My hubby was away (go figure), and a female raccoon pried down soffit (split level) and got in. She had pups. I could hear them overhead in the spare bedroom. One quick look with a flashlight up in our attic hatch confirmed it. We tried the boombox, strobe lights, but what made her take her babies and run was a sound. Hubs downloaded a sound generator onto his iphone, and a tone around 6000-8000 khz made the pups chirp loudly when he held it up in the attic. We plugged it into the iphone/ipod dock on the boom box, cranked up the volume, and she was gone overnight, with all her pups! We did the right thing and taped paper over the hole and monitored it for two days..no activity so it's now boarded over until we can make a prettier repair. Just thought you might want to know.

Comments (13)

  • brickeyee
    10 years ago

    There is no shortage of racoons.

    Peanut butter and rat poison.

  • wendy2shoes
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    She was trap savvy. Caught an opossum attempting to catch her, so, we had to be innovative.

  • Tmnca
    10 years ago

    brickeye, there is no shortage of humans, either.

    wendy2shoes, great job!

  • brickeyee
    10 years ago

    "there is no shortage of humans, either. "

    But murdering them is a crime, and killing animals that are destroying your house is not.

  • geoffrey_b
    10 years ago

    Hey Brickeyee... to go along with that peanut butter a nice dish of anti-freeze - they love that sweet stuff.

  • ionized_gw
    10 years ago

    Individual urban raccoons have remarkably restricted territory. I don't know how long it takes others to move in after another is removed, but it might be worth a try to reduce the local population. I trapped 5 in a live trap baited with kitty kibble doped with fish sauce. I was trying to nab feral cats after a neighbor moved out and left a half-dozen cats behind. My local animal control loans traps. I called them and told them that there is something wrong with their cat trap.

    Raccoons and possum are both pretty destructive nuisances in urban landscapes. The feral cats are no fun either and I consider them to be a worse problem since they are the only known predator of native songbirds on our map.

    This is a remarkable study of urban raccoons. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/category/episodes/by-animal/raccoons/

  • bus_driver
    10 years ago

    A raccoon can be one of the most vicious creatures imaginable under certain circumstances. Their willingness to engage in combat exposes them to rabies quite often.
    So they pose a double danger to humans. Distance is a protection.

  • energy_rater_la
    10 years ago

    so.... any ideas on the way to stop the armadillo that digs for grub
    worms in my yard...humanely. I'm not going to shoot it.

    last night he had a very busy night.
    my back yard looks like someone set off land
    mines.

    btw...how long do those son of a guns live?
    this is the same one...I've seen for the past
    6 years. HUGE. the small one that lived under
    my Mom's place moved on after I put wire fencing
    around the house. but the one that digs in my
    yard...he is a smart critter for sure!.

    this is also the start of the.same spring/summer issue with my dog who thinks snakes are the play with. I've put a lot of time into clearing out things...but he roams the
    woods on either side of me.
    Y'all would have laughed at me chasing my dog around
    the yard with a dead garter snake, trying to teach him
    to leave them alone.
    vet said he is probably a repeat offender!
    so far this spring I've found & released 4 baby garter snakes..
    last summer my dog got bitten 3 times. first two were
    garter snakes...but the third one..I didn't get a look at.
    but at 10 pm we were at the emergency vet.
    took 2 weeks for the swelling in his throat to go back
    to normal. looked like he had a goiter!

    kudos to you wendy.
    rat poison & antifreeze
    are painful deaths. takes a cold heart to
    do that IMO.

    I don't like killing.

    btw has anyone watched billy the exterminator
    on a&e? I've watched a few episodes on hulu.
    he takes the critters & releases them, or puts them
    in facilities for wild life. one episode he was trying to
    catch a bobcat & got an armadillo instead.
    unfortunatley before the got there it died.
    hot humid Louisiana...he took it home to his
    pet cemetary, buried it & put a marker with the
    name he gave it. gotta like a guy with a heart.
    and a goth guy at that!!

    no problem with racoons here...guess they have
    easier places to nest than my house.
    I'd hate for my dogs to come across a mother
    with babies. they did get..or thought they got
    a possum..but she was playing dead. I got
    the dogs inside & told her to take her babies
    away from my yard....& she did. when I went
    back outside a half an hour later...no possum!

    I hope more people will show some mercy for
    animals. we are all God's creatures.

  • wendy2shoes
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thank goodness we don't have armadillos in Canada (yet). Possums came up about 30 years ago. Skunks dig up the lawns for grubs here. The only thing I can suggest is get rid of the grubs. If you could get a flock of starlings to 'come on down', that would work, but people around here use nemotodes. They are a small parasite that you spread on your lawn, they hatch, and kill grubs. Local garden centres sell them in the spring.
    I told the mama raccoon to leave as well, except I used my best Burton Cummings voice from "American Woman"..."you know you gotta leave...you know you gotta go..Bye bye..Bye bye"

  • southerncanuck
    10 years ago

    Serve them eviction papers, if they don't leave see Judge Judy. Seriously the only trick that we have used successfully is the strobe light at night.

  • ionized_gw
    10 years ago

    What is a "non-target animal" in this case?

    "...we keep building homes in their habitat"

    In fact, we generate habitat for many species. This would probably include urban raccoon populations since they are so successful in that environment compared to undeveloped wilderness.

  • silvamae
    10 years ago

    Hi people. I'm visiting from the stained glass and mosaic forum. I successfully rid our attic of raccoons and want to pass it on. I needed a humane way to do it and I didn't want to fool with trapping and releasing. (Even if I was okay with poison, which I'm not, then we would have to deal with dead bodies, smell, etc.) Our attic is huge with many places to hide and some inaccessible to us. Here's what we did.

    We bought four packages of tennis balls and a jug of ammonia. We filled the packages with ammonia and let them soak for about 30 minutes. Then we tossed the tennis balls into the inaccessible areas of the attic. The rest of the ammonia we placed in open containers. We set up a radio, tuned to AM talk stations, loud enough to be annoying.

    After two days we climbed back up there and sprinkled flour all over the floor using a kitchen strainer. The next day we went back up and checked for footprints in the flour (there were none).

    It's important to make them leave asap. They mate in January and once they have their babies in the spring, it might get more complicated.