Critters on my porch

[dixie_belle]

We have an enclosed "cat house" on our front porch with a little kittie door where they can go in and out. All the cat food and litter is out there (so you can't see it when you're on the porch). Lately, we've noticed that all the food is gone in the morning and in the past this has not been the case. We assumed we had something coming on the porch, slipping into the cat house, and eating the food. One evening we actually saw a raccoon out there. AH HA, so that's the culprit. We borrowed a live trap from a friend and baited it with....cat food, duh. The next morning - BINGO a raccoon. Hubby takes the trap, drives farther out in the country than we are (which isn't easy, by the way, because you gotta drive 30 minutes to get to the middle of nowhere from where we live) and releases Rocky Raccoon. Just to be safe, set the trap the following night. Um....caught Bullwinkle raccoon. And on....and on.....and on......Set the trap 5 nights, caught 5 raccoons. We decided we could probably do this every single night so now we just put the cat food away at night. So sorry cats, eat your dinner before dark.

I cleaned up the cage really well and I'll return it to my friend this next week when I go into town to grocery shop. However, I can't do anything "normal" so I decided it would be cute to have something in the cage when I return it. I purchased two stuffed....ready

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penguins at a garage sale today. Spent a whopping $.50. I'll put those in there and make up a silly note about catching something odd on the porch and maybe they can help me identify it.

Should be cute.

 

[secuono]

In most areas, if not all, it's illegal to 'trap and release' anywhere but on your property/where the animal was caught.

Just be aware of that.

Also, they know where dinner is, they will keep coming. And now that the food is gone, they might come during the day. Worse yet, they have no issues with killing and eating your cats, especially since the free buffet is gone....

I'd redo your setup so no coons can come in.

 

[shorthorsemom]

I get coons on my porch eating my cat food. They drive me crazy. I groomed my dogs and started leaving a big cardboard box of dog hair out there on the porch and I keep adding to it. I don't know if it works to scare rocky coon away, but it hasn't been back since I put the dog hair box out there. I have a collie, its a lot of hair.

We have some coons coming into the barn at night this past week, they are very active right now. Caught one already, know I have a couple of more to trap since I found feed torn up again. Trap release doesn't work here because they walk all the way back. Lets just say the ones that come into my space and try to eat the million dollar seed corn, they don't ever come back.

They can live in peace here, but if they come into our space and do bad things and get into the habit of coming into the barn where the animals are or get too close to my cats... then they are trapped and removed.

I live in the country and wonder if folks come and bring their trapped critters here and turn them loose. You can tell the ones that don't belong, they are hungry and don't know the terrain and those displaced critters are scary because they are bolder.

I chuckled about the 5 coons and 5 nights and wondered if it was 5 nights and 1 coon, they will walk back quite a distance. LOL.

 

[dixie_belle]

We actually spray painted one of the raccoon's butts red (just to see if it was the same one every night or a different one). No red butt came back.

And our joke is that while my hubby was on his way out to the fields, some farmer from the field was on his way to our neighborhood. And all we were doing was trading raccoons!