The damned raccoon got my koi yesterday. I installed an electric fence around my koi pond in my back yard, and this worked for several months. I unplugged the energizer for just one night, and the bastard came in and ate 5 of my 7 prize fish…
It occurred to me that the raccoon could see the flashing LED on the energizer, and realized that when it waasn’t flashing he could come right in to feast…
These are damned smart predators. I restocked the pond and covered the LED with electrical tape. I hope this will lead the bastard to try to get into the pond again, and I hope the 6KV gives his moist snout a good lick.
Not a raccoon hater by any means but you might be better off trapping him in a cage trap and relocating him elsewhere (far away). He’s got Koi fever now and the fence will not stop him forever. You’re going to lose more fish unless you take him out of action.
I was a hater for a while, but I don’t have a reason to be anymore…
Make the fence REALLY hot, and have…perhaps…barb wire. Then put up about three strands of the wire. He’ll stay out.
There are other ways, but we’ll not mention them here.
Check with your state wildlife department, as well as local ordinances, especially if you are using any lethal control method. For example, in Florida, according to my copy of the “Urban Wildlife Resources Handbook”:
DO NOT relocate the animal!! There is high chance of spreading disease among populations of raccoons and other animals (including domestic pets) in the new area. Not to mention, you are merely dumping the problem on someone else’s doorstep. How would you feel about someone from 30 miles away anonymously dropping off a nuisance animal to start causing problems in your area?
I’ll see what else I can dig up.
**Game & Fish Commission - the old name for the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission
He’s complained in more than one column about how much smarter raccoons are than humans. Paraphrasing from memory: The raccoons will observe your pathetic attempts via closed-circuit cameras from their hidden lair, then destroy your pathetic security using advanced laser technology. If we ever get serious about getting to Mars, all we need to do is somehow convince the raccoons that campers have hidden food there …
I have nothing to add at this point (still doing research), but I just want to clarify that although the Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (formerly the Game and Freshwater Fish Commission) is an agency of the State of Florida, they can spell much better than the above quote implies.
Buy a Hav-a-Hart trap. Put fish on the plate. Place it near your Koi pond.
Once you have the raccoon trapped, place the cage by the tailpipe of your automobile. Start your car. Walk around like you are about to put the cage in your trunk. Oooops! You forgot something in the house. Go inside. Get distracted. Come back in half an hour.
Dig hole.
Empty cage into hole.
Pour a little gasoline over dead critter (stops other animals from digging him up.)
My family’s solution to raccoons is noise. And as far as I know, it works as well as anything else. Play a radio near the pond…the human voices ought to scare off critters. Or tie a couple of tin pie plates to a metal stake. The slightest breeze will clang away raccoons.
I already complained about raccoons last year. People write back saying notify local animal control authorities.
However, my neighbor likes raccoons and has even named them, babies and all, and there must be at least 40 of them. When she throws out food it looks like they are taking over the earth in a horror movie. They knock all pots over in the night so they have to be surrounded by wire, and my lovely plants in containers look like they are in jail. They screech all night long and snarl at each other and bound around on the roof and up and down the cyclone fence. Nobody can have an outdoor fountain because they tear it apart. What the raccoons don’t overturn and dig up, the deer eat from the top, as we are right next to the woods. Not that that matters, as in the local tract house area the deeeer and raccoon romp, dig, and chomp with impunity too. The roads are covered with dead raccoons and pieces of dead deer all year round. Deer hoof prints are what I have for a lawn. The raccoons hurl aside by several yards any brick edging put down, and knock over ornamental statuary and plastic chickens from Wallmart. The deeer and raccoons are interfering with capitalism and interstate commerce because people give up gardening and ornamenting their homes. This is about 28 miles south of the Chicago’s Loop and used to be all farms when people had sense enough to just shoot all varmints and eat them. I will have to move to the Hill William or whatever it is called now country where they probably still do make use of these creatures. Next let us take up the Suburban Goose Problem. Signed, Lament, Lament, nothing can be done. Although where do I get electric fencing? I don’t see it at Wallmart or K-Mart, which are the only stores left anymore besides Menards and HomeDepot, and I don’t see it there either. It is probably illegal anyway or some louche teen will amble by and be so allergic to electricity that he’ll fall ill from it…
Run an extension cord out to your pond. At the end of the cord place a personal computer w/ internet connection. Round about dusk go on out, fire up the PC and sign into the Straight Dope Message Boards. Being the curious/intelligent critters that they are the raccoons will invariably begin reading and posting to the SDMB. By morning they will be so bleary eyed and coffee drunk that they will just want to get home and get some rest. If they happen across this thread – well, lets just say they may realize dopers mean business!
One of my friends had a similar problem. Some rabbits were eating his mom’s garden so she requested that the rabbits be taken out with his .22 caliber rifle.