Learning about Raccoons

I’ve been learning about raccoons this week. I had hired wildlife capture professionals Animal Capture Wildlife Control to humanely trap and relocate raccoons that have been digging in my garden since September. Three traps were set on December 9th. The first raccoon was caught and relocated two days later. Read about that in “The Connection Between June Bugs & Raccoons.”

Last night, I looked out before I went to bed and there was another raccoon in a different trap. Raccoons, though destructive, are very beautiful animals.

Second raccoon trapped

I went out this morning to check on the animal and discovered that it had pulled a huge mound of dirt into the cage and was digging in it. Since the ground underneath the cage was hard and full of birch tree roots it didn’t make sense.

Raccoon shaping pieces of cloth pot

Then I realized it had shredded two cloth pots and pulled them and the potting soil into the cage. The trap was set behind a row of my cloth pepper pots, and I was waiting for a dry sunny day to clean out the pots, fluff up and amend the reusable soil. They made a nice barrier to conceal the trap. Even the plastic pot had been relieved of the top four inches of soil.

Raccoon holds shredded cloth pot in a ball

That raccoon worked all night on this project. You can see in its forepaws the wadded up remains of a cloth pot. This is what’s left of it.

Shredded cloth pot turned into nesting material for raccoon

The first raccoon was trapped beside a big plant and it had pulled leaves and branches in to make a green nest in the cage. Jeremy at the wildlife control company assured me this is typical behavior.

Jeremy holding my second trapped raccoon

You can just imagine the rustling around you would hear if one or more were in your attic! My elderly neighbor across the street is convinced they are nesting in his crawl space. Hopefully, there were only two and we will have now moved them safely to the Angeles National Forest. My raccoon’s traveling companion was a huge 30 pound raccoon, a full 25% larger than mine.

30 pound raccoon trapped in Valley Village, CA

Did you know raccoons store fat in their bushy tail for the long winter? If you’d like to learn more about raccoon characteristics, click here. Next Jeremy was heading to pickups in Manhattan Beach, then to Pasadena, and on to the forest. He said last year he trapped 16 skunks at one property here in Pacific Palisades!

My talented “Late Bloomer” sound editor Christina Horgan tells me she’s been around raccoons her whole life growing up in the area near Magic Mountain, and they work together in groups, so I should expect to trap more. But, I’ve decided this experiment comes to an end today. Learning about raccoons has been interesting, but I’m turning my attention back to my Monarchs. What are you doing to deal with critters? Thanks for reading! – Kaye

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Tags: Animal Capture Wildlife Control, biodiversity, critters, curbside gardening, farming on small scale, gardening, gardening web series, green your world, growing your own vegetables, Kaye Kittrell, Kaye Kittrell Late Bloomer, Late Bloomer, learning about raccoons, pest management, pests, Photography, raccoon, raccoons, urban gardening, web series, wildlife, wildlife capture

Category: Community, Critters, Pest Management, Pests