Last night, a raccoon climbed onto my balcony, wandered across to the other side and then climbed up onto the roof. The cat caught sight of it through the sliding glass door and spent several minutes staring up at where it had disappearing, meowing with his tail puffed up.
Today, the raccoon appeared again, and my stupid sister roomie opened the sliding glass door so that Shan and the raccoon could stare at each other through the screen door, with Shan meowing and tail-puffing again. I don’t doubt that if one or both of them had deciding to take the other on, that the screen would have barely slowed them down–Shan’s 16 pounds of cat, and the raccoon looks bigger’n he is. Luckily, the raccoon left again after I shut the door.
Anyone have any suggestions–safe non-destructive ones only, please–for driving off/discouraging raccoons from hanging around? I’d rather not have it show up while someone’s on the balcony–or worse, when someone’s going in or out–letting it in or Shannie out.
A former girlfriend of mine had raccoons that were somehow getting into the airconditioning ducts of her apartment; I don’t know what they were doing, but I was in there once or twice when they were crawling around and occasionally knocking dust down out of the vents.
Anyway, someone suggested putting a little bowl of Pine-Sol in places where they’re likely to be hanging around. Not as poison to kill them, but because they apparently hate the smell of it and it’ll keep them away.
I have no idea if this worked or not, but it seems worth a try.
My brother swore that leaving animal urine nearby chased them away. I suggest hosting a nicely sized poker party and tell the attendees your toilet is broken. It would be easier if you only invite male animals but not an absolute neccesity. Provide lots of cheap beer, Natural Lite Ice maybe.
I’ve never tried it myself for some reason but many people in our neighborhood told us the same. In that area raccoons (or Nazi raccoons, to be precise) were a very common problem.
I heard from a friend, uh, yeah, that’s it, “a friend,” that this works on dogs.
WARNING: POSSIBLE TMI AHEAD
Specifically, I had a dog who stayed in the backyard when I was out of the house, and now and then she liked to dig. She’d dig, I’d tell her not to, she’d dig the hole deeper when I was gone again.
Finally one night I got rather lit up and decided I knew what to do: I went out in the backyard and pissed all over the hole she’d been working on. It turned out to be an effective solution; she never went back to it, and after one or two more treatments of other holes, she stopped digging holes altogether.