Ahh yes. Racoons were the bane of my in-laws existence when they still lived in their house in the west end of Toronto. Momma raccoon one day decided that their pool shed was a good place to have her babies, and realized that she could get into my in-law’s house to get food if she tried hard enough (i.e. tearing out the screens in the kitchen on the nights they left the windows open). They had to call an exterminator to take the whole raccoon family somewhere far away, but they were not going quietly! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard screams like that before :eek:
My f-i-l is the kind of guy who likes to get up in the middle of the night to have a snack, and he ran into momma raccoon in their kitchen once or twice, but he always thought it was the (very fat) cat until he got a closer look, and by then she’d be gone. When the exterminator pulled an empty jar of peanut butter out of the pool shed along with the raccoons, my f-i-l exclaimed “So THAT’S where that went!” Apparently he got up in the middle of the night to make a snack, forgot to put the peanut butter away, and the next morning it was gone. It had been bothering him for MONTHS trying to figure out where that damn peanut butter went
When I lived on Tyandaga they opened the big garage doors to get in, they opened the unlocked back door to get in, and they climbed down the fireplaces’ chimneys to get in. If yours are relatives of the ones that invaded my place, I’ll give you a discount on drafting up your last will and testament. Be afraid; be very afraid.
One of my Toronto frat brothers had a one night stand with a racoon.
We lived in a run down house (previously a Scientology drug rehab house) which we were trying to renovate. Unfortunately, we obtained the wrong type of building permit, so we had to stop work after we had removed the doors, the windows, some of the floors, some of the walls, the electrical connection including the furnace, and the water connection. It made for a cold winter.
One morning as I was walking down the hall I looked over through where a wall used to be and saw my friend cuddled up in bed with a racoon. Figuring that discretion is the better part of valour, I quietly contnued on my way without interrupting them. Later that moring I asked him if he knew if he had been snuggling with a racoon. He said yes, it had woken him in the middle of the night, but in his stupor he thought it was his cat in Montreal, so he let it curl up with him. Come the morining when he woke up, he realized it was a racoon, but since it was warm, and since he did not want to upset it, he did not do anything about it and simply nodded off again in domestic bliss.
At that same partially torn apart frat house, we had problems with racoons living in the chimneys, so we put stacks of concrete patio blocks on top of each of the chimneys. We made a big mistake in no telling everyone in the house about this, for one night one of the guys made a fire with some flooring. Shortly thereafter, there was a hellacious chorus of racoon screams, and smoke coming into the room. I hustled up to the roof and pushed the blocks off the chimney. A family of racoons scurried out and lept into space.
The very unfortunate part was that the tail of the last of them was on fire. (I was later told that it initially tried to escape the chimney by way of the fireplace.) After having jumped off the top of the chimney, they scurried along the property line fence, with the last one flickering, and us hoping that it would not set anything on fire and feeling very sorry for what was happening to it, but not sorry for ridding them from our house for the time being.
Normally one would recommend a .22, but since racoons are fully capable of seizing it from you and shooting you with it, you’d be better off either calling in an air strike or getting your grandparents a coon dog. Best go with the air strike.
I read that in the voice of Larry the Cable Guy and it makes a really good and sweet story. There is a moral to be had somewhere in there but I’ll be damned if I don’t know what it is yet but it will come to me and make the world a better place.
[Larry The Cable Guy]I figured out the moral to that parable now after much contemplation. I think that proves why a raccoon in your bed is much better than a woman. It leaves bed and disappears before you even have to ask, it knows how to operate complicated machinery without detailed instructions and it doesn’t talk back. If it weren’t for those teeth, it would be the perfect companion. [/Larry The Cable Guy].
Last year I caught a raccoon sleeping in the cat house. (We have outdoor-only cats.) I rapped on the cat house a few times, but it wouldn’t come out. So I literally had to turn it upside down. The raccoon eventually flopped out. It just stood there looking dazed and confused. My buddy was with me, and he put three rounds of .45ACP into it. Good-bye raccoon.
There’s some kind of “you need new glasses” ad out there that has a woman calling in her cat from outside for the night. A big raccoon ambles up, and she greets it as if it’s her cat and says it should come sleep with “mommy.” Even though that cracks me up, I still think a skunk would be funnier.
Raccoons can be scary-smart. When my family was camping when I was a kid, I still remember checking out the big metal Coleman brand cooler in the morning and seeing all the dirty little pawprints around and on the latch that held the cooler top shut. It was pretty tough (through sheer stiffness as well as some complexity) even for kids to open, else I would have bet they’d have figured it out and gotten in.
I’m fortunate enough to live in an area where we don’t seem to have them (as evidenced by the intact garbage cans), though one afternoon my husband was watering the garden and saw a huge raccoon wandering towards him. Fearing it was rabid (being the middle of the day and all, normally you don’t see them active until after dark) and/or used to associating humans with food, he turned the hose on it full-blast. It made very grouchy sounds at him, and finally ran off.
If they’re getting into the attic then you have a hole in your fascia board above the gutters (hidden from view) or your soffit panels are just laying there (like a false ceiling) and the raccoon can lift them up.
