The cat house is on the porch. When I tipped over the cat house, the raccoon just stood there on the porch looking dumfounded.
My buddy knelt down on the grass at the edge of the porch, and used the porch to support his .45. (So the barrel was horizontal and about 5 inches above the porch.) The first shot didn’t seem to do much. He put two more rounds in it, after which the raccoon took a few steps, fell off the porch, and died. I then scooped it up with a shovel and threw it in the back 40 for the coyotes to devour.
What you forgot here was the electric train transformer, connected to the wire. My brother does this with squirrels. He says he waits until they get about halfway out there, then hits the switch and they fall off. According to him, “it takes the young ones about twice before then figure it out.”
It’s definitely not the soffits. I have tested every single one with my raccoon-whacking stick, and I can tell you there isn’t a half inch of give in any one of them.
We’re going up on the roof the next clear day we get.
I had a rather lengthy battle with squirrels that started with a hole pecked into the facia board by a bird. Whoever originally installed the gutters didn’t line the facia with aluminum sheeting and as the gutters moved down the line of the house the wood was exposed. When I was in the process of replacing all the facia/gutters I had a number of exposed holes that I plugged from the inside with wood. One of the squirrels was literally hanging over the edge of the roof battling with the piece of wood I was holding (imagine a angled “T”). I was smacking the squirrel with my “battering ram” and it was aggressively fighting me. WTH? It’s a 2 story house and it’s dangling over the edge fighting me.
O.P. You sound like a nice enough guy, but it’s time to grow some balls and hire a pro to kill the racoons. You are talking about your house and safety!
When I worked in Elk Grove Village (NW Chicago Suburb) as the overnight manager in a hotel, which was located in a business corporate park, we had racoons.
One of those little buggers actually figured out where to stand so he could trip the automatic door and come into the hotel. At night I had to actually go shut off the automatic door so that he couldn’t get in.
I periodically have problems with racoons here at the house. I have metal wire trap that I catch them with (marshmallows make good bait) and I take them farther out in the country and release them.
Yea, I have heard that is about the same as killing them, but I figure they have some chance that way, so its either that or a bullet.
Some of them are real laid back about the ordeal, but a few will make some scary-ass faces and noises that makes you damn glad they are in the trap.
Of course, they are terribly smart little bastards, so the standard trap doesn’t work that well.
The first one I caught just managed to roll the whole trap over onto its side where the catch for the spring-loaded door would fall away and the racoon could squeeze out.
After that, I took an old broomstick and stuck it sideways through the mesh of the trap so it couldn’t be rolled over. The next racoon subverted this measure by simply chewing completely through the broomstick, then rolling the trap.
Now, I always run a piece of steel rebar through the cage and nail it down to a piece of 1’x6’ board. No more escapes.
In my last attempt, I caught a possum. This had happened before, and I just raised the door and he scampered out into the brush. This time, the possum just looked at me. I raised the door and he just stared at me. I propped open the door and left, figuring he would leave just as soon as he saw me leave the area.
Nope. It was daytime now, and they usually sleep during the day, so he just curled up at the far end of the trap and went to sleep. I checked on him throughout the day, but he never got up and walked the foot-and-a-half it took to leave the cage. Finally, sometime after sundown, he woke up and decided to make his way home.
Cute little critters - rows of sharp needle-teeth.
