Raccoon making himself right at home on my porch - dumping out potted

[MTchick]

Raccoons carry disease and can be aggressive. I am a wildlife biologist and a vegetarian, and I say trap it and kill it. It is a straight forward question in my mind- the animal on your porch is habituated to humans. If you relocate it, it will either be killed by other raccoons (they are territorial) or find another human home to call its "buffet table." Worse yet, it might come back to your house anyway.

Drowning is not nice, but it works. Shooting is faster but more prone to error- and a wounded raccoon is not a good thing. The best option is a professional animal control officer with a trap. They'll trap it, and kill it humanly. It costs more, but it is probably worth it.

It is dumping out potted plants because there are worms in there, probably.

-MTchick

 

[panner123]

Smith & Wesson works for me every time. Roast coon is tasty.

 

[peacebird]

Thank you all - he was back again last night. Seems to be unafraid of me which is worrisome. I called animal control and they said it is illegal to relocate a racoon because of rabies concerns.... which makes me even less fond of having him on my porch...

What do you recommend I bait the trap with?

 

[schmoo]

Since you already have a cat, I'd use catfood. If you can get the wet kind in a fish flavor that would work for sure. They also like fresh veggies, and cooked bacon.

I just bought 2 live traps yesterday. Opossums and coons have been running around here at night. I'm not setting the trap until my DH gets home from working out of town, because I don't have the guts to do anything with the critter after I catch it.

 

[SpottedCrow]

Raccoons also like sweet things. When we were trying to catch the one that got Tom, the trapper used used litter, some of Tom's feathers, fish flavoured cat food and some cherry stuff. And if you don't catch him the first time or he gets out of the trap, he'll avoid the trap the next time and keep on coming back. I don't like raccoons anymore since Tom...They're not the cute Disney Meeko's; they're dangerous and a full grown boar is mean!

 

[Cheri]

sigh. I wish you didn't have that problem. I only dealt with a dead racoon. IT died in my drive way.

 

[chicknmania]

It is very hard to kill an animal, even if it has been killing your birds. At least I think so. They are only wild animals, following their natural instincts. We asked for help from a trapper cause we had so many predators, including skunks,raccoons, and a weasel and lost twenty one birds in a period of about a month. The raccoons killed, probably at least ten of those. That is the only reason we asked for help. He told us many people trap their own pests, but ask him to disposeof them. He killed two raccoons we trapped right in front of my son. It was very hard to deal with for us. I didn't think it was appropriate for him to kill them that way, but he did give us a lot of advice re bait and trapping methods for different critters.

 

[chicknmania]

If you want to trap coons and nothing else, use marshmallows. We used marshmallows, tuna fish, sardines and a strawberry; caught two coons and two rats. Interestingly enough, all our skunks deserted their den in our barn as soon as we set the traps out.