Urban Wild Kingdom

An exciting night here for the Urban Hayseed. Out on my nightly wander about the yard, after a hearty tinkle on the compost pile, I turned to return to the house and saw a pair of eyes light up in my headlamp about 20 feet ahead of me. I knew Chuckles the Kat was out and about, but he wouldn’t hide under our gazebo and watch me. I thought maybe it was rats again, but I don’t think their eyes light up and these were REALLY big rats. Maybe it was the neighbor’s cat? Then, I saw another. Then I saw Chuckles across the lawn watching what I was watching.

I knew then I was having my first encounter in my yard with RACCOONS!!! Bum bum BUMMMM!!!

Well, it seemed really exciting while I was out there.

I’d heard tales of them marching through my yard from my neighbor next door. I now saw that there were several of them making their way through the fence to that neighbor’s yard. They didn’t make a sound, and there were at least three that I saw. The other thing is that they apparently weren’t all that concerned about me. They were avoiding me but taking their sweet time about it.

Urban Raccoons are omnivorous, nasty, and smart. I’ve dealt with them in other places that you wouldn’t think there’d be any wildlife at all– like San Francisco. Here, I’m not so surprised. We live less than a mile in either direction from large parks– Mt. Tabor and Laurelhurst. I’d be more surprised if we didn’t have them. Still, I’ve been here nearly three years now and not seen a single ‘coon in my yard, and I’m out there several nights a week at all hours.

The Urban Chickens class that I took at the local college focused a lot of time on dealing with raccoons and their bloodlust. About anyone who has chickens has a horror story about finding them ripped into pieces and, often, not eaten.

Swell. I need that in my life.

There’s no getting rid of Procyon lotor. They’re like rats in that moving them just makes room for more and causes more problems than it solves. The answer is generally to leave them alone and try to protect yourself from losing pets or livestock by politely dissuading them from visiting your house. In my case, that means no cat food outside, trying to find and close up denning spots (good luck), and installing an electric fence around the chicken coop.

Let’s hope that this is a sufficient reminder to me that I’m not building my coop in such a way that in case raccoons show up it’ll be OK. I’m building it to keep these raccoons out every night.

They’re out there.

Ooo…