I used to think raccoons were cute little fuzzy animals right out of a Disney movie. With there little bandit masks and their five fingered hands and feet they had to have been created by Disney – right? Wrong! Now I know them as sneaky, heartless little vermin that need to be kept out of my chicken coop and feed storage room.
It started with the cat food. We have “acquired” several stray cats (ie they just keep showing up and staying) that we feed primarily as natural rodent control. We started noticing that the metal garbage can where we store the cat food would be open in the morning. After first blaming the kids for leaving it open after they fed the cats, we finally realized that something was opening it at night. So, we started keeping a cinder block on top of the lid at night. This worked for, oh, about 1 night before the unknown varmints figured out to tip the trash can over and then get into the food again. Once we had that solved (a bungee cord works great for this BTW) we started noticing that we were missing chickens.
Now, missing chickens isn’t an entirely new event. We have lost chickens to fox, bald eagles, even hawks. The thing that was odd this time was that the kids would go out to collect eggs in the morning and find a chicken laying on the floor of the coop. The only things they were eating were the internal organs. It was pretty gruesome to see but by now, we knew we had a raccoon problem.
They are strong and smart and with opposing digits, they can open nearly everything. We have a small door that the chickens go out of but it didn’t have a latch – it was just slid into place in a groove cut into the frame around the door. The raccoons would simply slide the door open, grab a sleeping chicken or two and then abscond with them.
We went from 17 chickens down to 8 in just a couple of nights. Then they started getting into the stall where we store our pig and chicken feed and ripped open 8 or 10 bags of feed – eating some but mostly making a huge mess. Grr. Any sympathies for raccoons were gone the first time our daughter found an eviscerated chicken when collecting eggs!
One evening, Julie heard something in the area where we stored the cat food. I grabbed my flashlight and my .22 and went looking. Sure enough, we chased a raccoon out of the stall and up a tree. Fortunately, I had just purchased a 5,000,000 candle power spotlight (we live in a land of excesses – what can I say) so the raccoon didn’t stand a chance. A .22 to the head and down it came.
We still had something getting into the feed. Hmm. So I installed a security camera in the feed room (that is the tech in me – it is a nice HPNA based camera that allows me to record and view the video feed from my PC). Sure enough, that night we say more raccoons (yes, plural, about 3 or 4 it seemed). On another night, I went into the stall, flipped on the light and what was looking back at me? Five guilty looking masked faces and their evil beady eyes!
Again, I go for the .22 but after shooting one, I’m struck by a flash of remorse and decide to catch the other 4. So (don’t try this at home) I put on some heavy work gloves and catch (yes, by hand, they were hiding in the corner) the other 4 raccoons and put them in 5 gallon buckets with lids. They sound ferocious! I was honestly afraid they were going to attack but into the buckets the went.
It turns out that moving wildlife is a crime (or so I’ve been told). So please don’t tell the authorities this but we drove them down the road a couple of miles to an area of mostly national forest and turned them loose. They will probably come back just to spite my moment of weakness kindness but that is what we did. Finally problem solved… right?
Move feed bags ripped open, more security video of the culprits. We must have had an entire colony of raccoons eating our cat food, all-you-can-eat chicken buffet and pig feed! This time, I was not going to be weak. I was not going to bend the law – they had to go. This time, I borrowed our good neighbor’s live animal trap and now have trapped two more for a total of 7 raccoons so far. We still haven’t caught them all. At least one is still trying to break into the chicken coop every night. I will catch him and put an end to his chicken killing ways. My poor defenseless chickens deserve no less. Who else is going to protect them?
Hmmm. Odd comments. Chinese? What did you do with the live caught raccoons? They keep getting into our garbage and scattering everything around. Will try the bungee cords – nothing else worked.