I was chatting with a neighbour a few days ago and he informed me he’d discovered a mama raccoon and her babies had moved into his attic. He was trying to live trap them and having no success.
Now I love raccoons, and all wildlife, but I do recall thinking, "Lucky for me it was his place and not mine."
A couple of days pass, and another neighbour tells me the guy had checked on the raccoons that morning and they were gone.
I guess mama didn’t like the harassment.
Soooo — a day or so after that — I’m sitting in my TV chair in the sun room, when I catch a blur of fur out the window. First brown, then black.
I get up for a better look and see it’s my cat Ringo lazily chasing a raccoon across the lawn.
Towards my house.
When the raccoon reaches the house, he climbs a tree, Ringo stops and chills, while the raccoon does a roof run.
Hmmm— I decide to go see where he/she went, and walk out in the yard, check up on the the roof and there’s not a raccoon in sight.
While doing a roof vent check I find one torn up some, and sure enough, mama has packed up everything and moved to the seniors home — my attic.
Sheeesh. Now what?
I mean it, I love raccoons, I’d invite mom and her kiddies to come live in the house with me if I could, but for a bunch of reasons, and then some, that just wouldn’t work.
I feel badly for her. Where is she supposed to go? Besides, as looney as this will sound to some of you, when I get into bed at night, it’s heartwarming to picture mom and babies cuddled together above my head, with only a ceiling between us.
I love both humans and animals. Always have — which is why I don’t eat meat.
There’ll be no exterminating going on, that I can promise.
So what to do? Google of course — and I found a great source of raccoon andhuman interaction information at torontowildlifecentre.com.
One of the first options we have is to do nothing. Wait until the babies are old enough for mama to take them out into the world, then seal any possible attic access points.
If you’d prefer they leave sooner, some friendly options include putting a bright light either just inside or outside the den entrance — they don’t like bright light. Or place a radio outside or inside the den if you can, playing fairly loudly, on a talk station — not music, because raccoons find human voices threatening. You could also soak some rags in either apple cider vinegar or ammonia, place them in a plastic bag, poke holes in it, and place the bags as close to the raccoons as you possibly can, without getting chomped of course. We defend our babies, why shouldn’t she?
What about live trapping you ask?As I was thinking of doing, but now am not? According to the Toronto Wildlife Centre (TWC), often people aren’t aware there are babies, so they catch mama and release her far away — which orphans the babies and they die a cruel death, perhaps in your attic. I don’t want that.
And according to TWC, if you release raccoons further than one kilometre from their home territory, it causes them great stress, moms will abandon babies, it’s just not a kind thing to do. Still, better than killing them I suppose, but not ideal.
My suggestion? Take your karaoke group up on the roof, surround the vent, leave an escape route — and just talk and sing mama and her brood right on out of your house, and probably even your yard, to some other neighbour’s house.
Problem solved!
Comments or feedback are always welcome!
lmustard1948@gmail.com
