Can you stand another 'coon question?

[Gercarson]

I know they are territorial (they are - right?) and if you "somehow" get rid of the dominate 'coon another one will fill the void. My question - do they always live in pairs? How long before another one shows up? The ones who have made their last visits to my chicken pens have been about a month apart - ALL of them. Is that normal or does it just take that long for these brazen and confident critters to find easy pickings? No, I do not relocate them.

 

[fordmommy]

Racoon babies tend stick together in families until they go to mate. A mother can have 4-6 babies at a time. And after 4-6 weeks of birth, they are foraging. Racoons, in my exerience, like routine. If they find something good to eat, they will keep coming back for a while even if there is no more. They are very curios animals. And tend to not really be scared of people. They may run away, but not far way. Almost to say "You can't catch me." But they will come back if they think they will find something.

I know all this because when I was younger, my mom helped raise coons for our local DNR if our local zoo was over crowded. We would take them in when the mother was killed or abandoned them. Sometimes they didn't even have their eyes open yet. We NEVER caged them and they always left on their own accord.


You know sometimes on the side of the road you may see three or four babies dead? That's because they stick together. They will stay with the dead one for days sometimes, trying to wake it up and make it go on.