How to (finally) catch a raccoon

WARNING: If you don't like to hear about innocent vegetables being mutilated, don't read the following.  You might also want to stay clear if you don't want to know about the cute fuzzy animals doing the mutilating that get shot.

We had a lot of damage.

At first we thought it was deer.  Last year we had a lot of deer trouble.  They would come in and eat a tip, half, or the whole ear of corn.  The husks would be pulled back, and they would just chomp off their choice.  This year we assumed it was also deer trouble.  After calling wardens and state officials in order to get a deer nuisance license, we wound up having to leave a message and just hope.  When we weren't getting a call back, we found some pics to look at and discovered that raccoons are also a problem.

Hmm...we only saw deer tracks once.  After that, the corn was left in a path and shucked and eaten like a human, not bitten in half.  Raccoon made sense.  We set out the hunt!!

We stayed up night after night to catch the stupid raccoons only to have conversations like this:

Frwump Frwump...

"Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"That sounded like a deer jumping the fence."

"Yeah it did."

(Much waiting in the silence occurred)

At this point we threw the light on high beam and panned the area.  Nothing.  Sigh.  We sat back down and waited some more.

"Haaaaw hee haw hee haw hee hawwwwww"  Our neighbor's donkey was apparently bored as well.  Every day we picked strawberries, he would talk to the other donkey on our other side.  They would talk for half an hour or more just braying back and forth.

"Did you hear that?"

"No."

This went on for several hours a night, for several nights.  We would leave the dog out every night when we came back in to detour anything. We finally bought a live trap. I didn't want to spend that much on a trap, and I couldn't shoot the thing in a cage, it just seemed unfair, but we got one anyway.  The first night, we set it out early so as to let our pets learn to stay away from it.  Boy was first.  He never went near it again.  Then Mya.  She has avoided it as well.  Knight never looked at it, so we just left it there with some leftover sloppy joe and went to bed.  I just knew I'd wake up to another attack.

In the meantime, we got a call back from the state.  They said to PLEASE kill the coon and not let it go somewhere else.  They're a real problem. The last thing I want to do is drive around with the blasted thing and find somewhere to let it go.

The next morning, it had caught something.  I was going to have to admit I was wrong, and that it did catch a coon, only it didn't.  It was a stray grey tabby I had never seen before.  There was much laughing and jeering from me.  No attack.  We assume the cat screams scared them away.  We let it loose and set it again with some ground beef that went bad and a bad ear of corn.  We caught Knight.  He hasn't been back either, but Mya did manage to eat the left over sloppy joe by moving the trap and licking what fell out.

Another attack one night led to these early morning pictures:

Suede was displeased with the flash

So, his mother Marigold came to investigate:

And got a bit of a treat.

(I think my chickens and cows may be in league with the coons as they seems to be the only ones benefiting from all of this)

Night after night of this crap.  We caught that stupid tabby again, got another attack on the other end of the corn that definitely looked like deer.  That was yesterday morning.  Last night, I insured the trap was set with cooked ground beef.  This morning, it was sprung.  It was grey, I assumed it was that stupid tabby again, so I set about my morning chores of bugging and harvesting hoping that leaving it in there a good bit would discourage future stupidity..

It was a beautiful fog morning, already warm and humid.  I was trying to get photos of the chickens practically running me over flying out of the coop, and video of my new pet bantam rooster, Bluefoot, crowing.  I discovered this:  (to see their full beauty, click on each picture to see an enlarged version.)

Then I heard it.  That unforgettable noise that has woken me up at 1AM many mornings.  That high purr/squeal thing raccoons do.

Arlis was sleeping in today, and Marcus wasn't due up yet, but I dropped my bug jar and basket and ran into the house.  Arlis woke up-amazing in itself-and came out.  I woke Marcus up as he wanted to see it, and he ran out in his undies and barely any shoes.  I warned him.  I told him they were cute and he didn't want to see this.  It was a baby.  It was a vicious, mean, horrible baby creature.

 At first I thought it was cute.  Then I saw this:

Arlis put his gun in and it attacked it like you wouldn't believe.  Then he shot him. Had to three times, and the stupid gun is awful.  You have to load it every bullet.  Not one cry or noise, so it wasn't that bad, but I'm glad I didn't have to do it.  One down, the rest of his wretched family to go.  We did get one good ear out of all of this.