I very much agree with Howard, in some places it is legal, some places not. My first call would be to Wildlife & Fisheries or whatever they are called where you live and chat with them. At least you would know where you stand legally and if you are lucky, may get some relief.
I don’t know if she is living alone or not, but having someone do a welfare check on her might be a reasonable thing to do.
When I was in suburbia a neighbor fed raccoons. Out in the middle of not much where I now live some people feed deer. The deer are a road hazard anyway but it’s especially dangerous around that house. In that area I’m particularly careful when I drive by.
My approach is first that it is my responsibility to protect my animals. I can control what I do, I don’t have a lot of control over what other people do. Whether or not someone “should” or “should not” do something is totally irrelevant, I like to deal with facts, not wishes.
My first approach is barriers, passive defenses that work whether I’m around or not. I have a deer fence around my garden. I use electric netting to protect my chickens from ground-based critters, my main problems have been dogs abandoned out here, not the wildlife, but the electric netting helps there too. I lock mine is a secure coop at night when the danger is highest. Good barriers are my primary defense.
I also trap. I don’t have a trap set all the time, but so far this year I’ve removed more than a dozen each of raccoons, skunks, and possum. A kind neighbor encourages this and has given me permission to dump the carcasses in an isolated area of their pasture. That sure beats digging holes.
On rare occasions I shoot something, almost always with a shotgun to limit the range. I don’t have neighbors all that close so I’m not too worried about hitting one of them or their houses with a shotgun, but there are a lot of cattle and horses around. I really don’t want to accidentally shoot one of them. I find the 12 gauge pretty effective and still limits the range, even full choke turkey load.
I personally do not consider trapping or shooting these critters to be a primary deterrent. It does not eliminate the problem. It reduces the number of critters hunting in that area, which is a big benefit, but it does not eliminate the problem. If you have one you have others. When I do go in a trapping binge it’s pretty normal to catch critters several nights in a row. One time I set the trap for what I was sure was a raccoon I caught two possum before I got the raccoon. I’ve caught skunks on three consecutive nights.
I consider reducing the numbers actively hunting your area to be a pretty big benefit, I don’t want to mislead people in that point. But my main defense is barriers, new critters will keep coming. And I consider it my responsibility to take care of my animals, not someone else’s.
