That blighter has gotten on my last nerve.
He’s eaten two baby fishes from the lotus pond. He’s ripped up a 30.00 lily. And the struggling lotus. He’s ripped up some of the waterlily pads on the main pond and tossed bark chips into the pond that nearly stalled out the 300.00 master pump, and would have if I hadn’t seen the waterfall stall out and gotten down on my hands and knees to decouple the pump and clear it of bark chips. He’s tried to eat our larger koi. He’s set off alarms that got us locked out in the back yard and cost us a 300.00 basement window.
Tolerance has run out. My only way to deter him forbids our cats the pleasure of their own garden. He’s destroying stuff. He’s eating our fishes. And waking us up at night. So he’s toast. I’ve called someone who will trap him in a trap safe for neighborhood cats, so if I get the neighbor kitty by mistake, we can just turn him loose. But this is war. Unfortunately by state law there’s no catch and release for this fellow, and I’m very sorry about that, but he’s beyond the annual nuisance some of his kin are who just trek through on their way to the river. He’s regarding our back yard as his and is big enough to threaten neighborhood pets, and I’m drawing the line.
Well, he’s gone. I’ve shed tears over that poor raccoon. I so hate killing things. But I don’t want to lose one of the cats either, and it’s their yard, and my obligation to protect them. Maybe that will end the problem. I hope so.
No, it’s never “nice” to have to deal with such an issue. I think the best we can do is be serious and intentional when we decide we must act, then be humane. That doesn’t mean a nuisance animal goes “Scot-free”, but we have long had guidelines for how to kill an animal humanely, e.g. Kosher and Halal Laws.
We have perpetual racoon problems here in the Maryland suburbs. I can’t leave my bird feeders out at night because the coons will eat all the seed. They even go after the sugar water in my hummingbird feeder, so now I can’t have that at all, because when we brought it in at night it attracted ants. And we occasionally have a rabid racoon in the neighborhood, so recently when I saw one on the deck during the day I was worried that he might be rabid, since they are usually nocturnal. After dealing with them for 20 years I’m not as sympathetic as I used to be. I do like the paintball gun idea though.
We too have a had a (multi-year) long and contentious relationship with the local, urban raccoons.NThe sun set half an hour or so ago. My spouse just came back indoors from firmly driving the young raccoons from the back ravine out of our yard — with a 8′ long spear hand-forged during long ago Medieval reenactment (SCA) days. It’s good for poking/prodding raccoons from a semi-distance. I no longer keep any plants overnight in my small water garden and no fish either after our first summer trying. It’s too small for fish or plants to avoid inquisitive and tearing raccoon hands.
After much repeated hard work by my spouse, we’ve managed to educate local raccoons to respect us and our property. They can come in for a drink (since we don’t have the fish or plants) but must respect/fear us and get out of our territory after. Our own cats are also purely indoor ones, which helps. Some twenty years ago, a raccoon laid open the side of a lovely Maine Coon cat whose family had just moved in and they had to put the poor cat down.
Mother raccoons, it turns out, are good at passing local geography/lore to their young — “this is a safe place, this has good food, don’t den here (under our porch!!!),” so our considered strategy has been to keep the local, educated and respectful raccoons alive rather than having uneducated interlopers move into the local ecosystem. Although, at times, we do get new raccoons and the education — plus sometimes trapping — process starts again.
On the other hand, wood chucks are not educatable! They moved in about three years ago, took up breeding and eating my garden. Those we trap and then, since —no you can’t loose them elsewhere— my spouse takes them out with the completely legal air rifle.
We’re basically in an old, industrial town (city actually) just outside Boston, but the wildlife adventures are surprisingly frequent. A coyote sometimes comes through too to snack on the raccoons, woodchucks and rabbits that all inhabit that small ravine behind us!
It was quite the week at home.
Earlier in the week, at dusk I noticed something whitish out next to my backyard fence. I thought it might possibly be a plastic “shopping bag” that had blown in, even though winds were light, but deserving of investigation. When I got out there it was gone, but scanning around I saw the rear part of a white cat’s body between two compost bins.
Thursday I saw a white cat sitting out by my burnpile. I got field glasses, to see better. It was white, but appeared to have a dirty face. Odd for a cat! It just sat there for longer than I was willing to stand at the window watching through the field glasses. It was walking when next I saw it and I saw it had a striped tail. I think it was a (rare?) orange-point Siamese in coloration. Actually of the breed is no longer guaranteed there’s been so much uncontrolled breeding.
Friday evening at sunset I got off the couch to close the windows and saw a deer run across my now cut hay field and simultaneously in the same area near my burnpile two quite large birds. Vultures maybe? Actually possible but too big and the legs were too long. Wild turkeys? Also possible, but I’ve never heard of any in the area. Then, in the shadows against the lighter field, I saw a crown on one! Wow! The confirmation as one turned just right in the dim light and I saw it’s irridescent blue neck! Neither had the well known tail of an adult peacock in breeding plumage. (Peahens are less irridescent and generally it’s green, IIRC, and have lighter underparts.) I used to hear peacocks crowing up on the hill a half-mile away. Neighbors complained equally loudly, even though there’s little authorities could do about it. Hadn’t heard them in years! Didn’t think any were still around. Glad to see it.
Then later that night a police car went down the street, siren wailing. That prompted a coyote back behind my hay field to sing. He’s a real and significant threat to that kitty, but not the peafowl. They can fly well and roost up in trees at night.
I’m just told that’s called a “Flame Point”, but I’m still not at all sure it’s Siamese.
This evening my youngest aunt called, and she told me about her son (veterinarian) doing surgery on one of his koi. It had a gash in its side – probably raccoon – that looked like it was infected. He consulted with a major aquarium on what to use, sedated the fish after catching it, did the surgery, then put the fish in fresh clean water to wake up, and some months later, it’s alive and the scar is disappearing. (It’s one of the dominant fish in the pond, and about a foot long.)