Groan...Raccoons :(

We've seen a single, smaller raccoon coming to the feeder at night...which I for a brief moment of insanity thought was cute, until last night, she showed up with her family :( I assume I have to stop feeding the birds now to "disinvite" her from the nightly feasts she was having :(

Yes I'd think so--or severely limit the amount and just put it out AM when you might be around to enjoy the birds. I'm with you- one little one would be cute and more than one would start to worry me!

They were amazingly unafraid of us...and insanely cute!!

Racoons are cute, and years ago I was around two little ones that were being raised to eventually be released back in the wild. They were friendly, very curious, and into everything. It was pretty cool watching their habits. They wash their food before they eat it. My neighbor Joey swears up and down that coons stole all of his tomatoes one night and had a feast at the creek LOL.

Sure wish that doggone SKUNK that lives amongst us (somewhere on my land but too often pungent) would someday become CUTE. I am jealous.

Unlike the resident groundhog, raccoons don't eat my flowers. So I don't mind them very much :-). However, they eat the bird food. At first we didn't know why all the seeds were gone each night and put a video camera to monitor it. Then we sprayed PAM on the feeder pole, hoping to stop the raccoons from climbing it. The raccoons came back that night and spent 20 minutes licking the PAM off the pole. The video was hilarious to watch.




This message was edited Mar 5, 2013 11:16 AM

Bwahahahahahaha!! OMG - that's funny!!!

HAha !!

I want to see that video!

Me too - bet it could win one of those Funniest Home Videos awards!

When I was a child we had two babies for a few months. Their Mom got hit by a car and my Dad and Uncle trapped them. We fed them until they were big enough to fend for themselves. I was fascinated by them but they were not happy being penned up and were pretty nasty. I remember my Dad putting on big thick gloves to get them out of the cage. I can't remember being allowed to touch them at all. Beck just hope that they don't get into your trash cans. Boy they can make a mess.

Have a friend in rural Maryland who found a very young raccoon and brought it home. His wife raised it and it imprinted on her as "mom". It spent evenings freely roaming the house but slept in a large cage in the living room. It would climb up on the counter and "help" Sandy wash the dishes and was quite a delightful pet. At around a year or so female raccoons break with their mothers and this one started to become hostile to Sandy so they let her go (the raccoon, not Sandy). Oddly enough it turned up for the day many months later on Sandy's birthday.

Great stories, haven't seen them in a few days, I've been giving the birds less seed and the feeder is empty by nightfall - she only got into the recyclables once, spread it all over the deck, but not since...hoping they will stay away, if not the new owners will have a house including pets ;)

That's a wonderful story, green thumb!