Where are the raccoons in FL?
I’m told that you can find a raccoon anywhere in the United States and Canada, but I haven’t seen once since I left MA. Is it possible that you don’t see raccoons here for the same reason you don’t see geckos in MA? Climate?
They are hiding in the swamps, and do not need to come around people as much as they do in the North.
I am from Florida and yes raccoons are native to FL. IF you want to know, leave your garbage out and find out!
Also, I am currently living in Texas - raccoons eat garbage here too…and opossums
Take note of roadkill, which I find to be a fairly reliable index of local fauna…
Tia3child,
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DrMatrix - General Questions Moderator
We had a family of them living in and around our dumpster in an apt. complex in Panama City. They had almost no fear of humans, although I had enough fear of them to spare.
They’re everywhere. The highest concentration was probably at the restaurant on the edge of either Wekiva or Ocala National Forest (I think Wekiva) that would feed them scraps every night back in the late 90s. Dozens would line up and wait across the river, then one day the city decided to end this practice…that night they waited and waited, but no food came 
Everglades national park, when I was a kid, we use to feed them behind the hotel we stayed in. As I recall they were somewhat smaller than the ones we had in New England, probably just the lack of a winter coat.
Raccoons in Florida - the alligators ate them all, thats why you don’t see any.
Them and the 22-foot python that was living under a house in Ft. Lauderdale for some months. Apparently that was its favorite meal :).
More or less… I’ve seen hundreds of opposums and armidillos for every cat/rat/etc… I doubt that’s the ratio in reality.
Make that armadillo.
Come down to Tampa, they’re here. They keep ripping open my friggin’ garbage bags. I need to either get a lid for the can or a BB gun for the coons.
I drove Alligator Alley once, and there was a dead raccoon about every hundred yards.
Well, that’s a little exageration, but just let me say that squashed raccoons were very, very plentiful.
I never realized there were places in Florida where it was even possible to posit a raccoon shortage. At our apartment complex in St. Pete, there’s a security guard who insists on giving the little varmints scraps of chicken and pork ribs, so on any given night you’ll see dozens of them surrounding the guard shack. We’ve tried to explain to him why this is a bad idea, but you try arguing with someone who drives a pickup truck that big.
[Forrest Gump]
Whenever we have 'coons on our back porch Mama just chased 'em off with a broom.
[/Forrest Gump]
I wish the raccoons in my part of Texas ate opossums.
On a camping trip to Florida last year, I was visited nightly by those little masked guys.