Raccoon Diaries

We set up a trap and have caught something every night for the last 5 nights. Let's get one thing straight right now, raccoons may be cute, but they carry a lot of disease and bacteria. My neighbor's dog suffered a long and painful death as a result of the bacteria from raccoon bites. My own dogs were attacked a few nights ago by a raccoon. They get into your garbage cans and pet food, even when they're sealed with lids. Having grown up in the country, I don't have sympathy for the plight of raccoons, which are just overgrown rats with a mask and furry tails, and an appetite for chickens, garbage, and overall naughtiness. We had to do something about our raccoon problem!! We bought a trap and baited it with cat food. Friday night, we caught "Winky", the one-eyed raccoon. He was pretty mean, and he made a mess of a bag of screws, but didn't do too much damage. We released him far off in the woods since we didn't have a 22 to get rid of him. Saturday night, we caught a striped stray cat. We let him go since the shelter is in Coos Bay. Sunday night, we caught "Vicious", a huge raccoon with a nasty attitude. She was twice the size of Winky, and she spent her night reaching her arm through the cage and destroying everything she could, ripping off a couple of her nails in the meantime and leaving bloody swipes all over. Look at all the crud in her cage! That's all from her destructive rampage where she'd reach out and grab things then shred them until she could fit them into the holes. This is what she did: She ripped up my grout bag and spread grout powder everywhere. She grabbed Hyrum's electric drill cord and gnawed it off. Notice the blood marks everywhere. Now I can't mix my grout! She broke several tiles too. She grabbed the tile saw cord, pulled the saw down and bit the plug off. (I'd already put the saw back in place by the time I'd thought to take pictures of it.) She made a mess of my recycling too. When I stood about 4 inches from her cage surveying the damage, she reached her arm out quick as lighting and with a loud growl and hiss, she slashed at my foot with her claws. Luckily, I was wearing shoes. Click on the picture to see the bloody claw mark she left on the toe of my shoe. Monday night, we caught a mangy black stray cat that had been in one too many fights. Tuesday night, or actually early Wednesday morning, we caught our own cat. Maybe the raccoons have all learned to stay away! I'm going to dare to put my cat food bin back out (so I don't have to trip over it in the kitchen anymore) and see if it gets broken into again. We caught Vicious on video helping herself to our cat food, and I tried to post it, but it wouldn't work. Oh well. My bins are broken now, by the way. The latches and wheels are broken off.