By William Wittreich - July 2018

You think you have seen it all, then the racoon shows up.

I am old and wise enough to know what I do not know.  But, when it comes to the upkeep of a house, I thought I had seen it all.  Having owned several houses over the last forty years, I have been exposed to the range of  “fixer-upper” to “new build”.  Now I like the new build, which still has some maintenance to consider, but overall is pretty easy.

So, that comfortable feeling in the rule of my domain was interrupted one day last summer when I looked out on our back deck and saw a racoon.  At first I was fascinated by the creature, but that changed when the animal decided to take a dump right there on the deck.  

I thought, how rude is that?

After a wet clean up on aisle 2, I was considering it would be just a one time event.  Not so.  Two days later there was another pile left on the patio.  Now, the racoon’s presence rose to the level of a nuisance.

Another cleanup was followed by an inspection of the deck, which included the pillars that support it from below.  The deck is elevated over a patio adjacent to our walk-out basement door, so there are two concrete pillars with stone veneer that support the corners.  Come to find out that those pillars are hollow down the middle and our racoon decided to take up residency in one of the pillars.

I would have been fine with the racoon living below our deck, if it were not for the fact that it was regularly taking dumps on the patio.  Now I was faced with the challenge of evicting the racoon from our property.

But, the plot thickens as the racoon seemed to be unusually fat and moved slowly.  It, or she was not fat, but pregnant, and soon after gave birth to a bunch of baby racoons inside of the pillar.

Yikes, the sounds of baby racoons squealing for food emanated from below the deck.  Things just got more complicated.

After looking around I connected with a company that specialized in urban wildlife.  I was looking to get the racoon, and babies, relocated.  But, the only option they offered was racoon death.  And, once they were dead, we would need to figure out how to pull their bodies out of the pillar, which had limited access at the top.  The thought of killing baby racoons was too much for me to handle, so I needed an alternate plan.

Further investigation provided the suggestion of trying to “stink” the racoon out.  Come to find out that racoons do not like pine scent.  So, we bought some industrial strength pine scented packets and dropped two of them into the pillar. Since it was an enclosed space, it apparently was very effective.  About an hour later, mom racoon came climbing down the pillar carrying baby number one in her mouth.  I was watching out the basement door, hidden by the blinds as I did not want to disrupt the operation.

Over a period of about 40 minutes, the mother pulled five babies from the pillar, showing amazing gymnastic abilities in climbing head first down the stone pillar with each baby in her mouth.  Once on the ground she scurried off into the bushes, returning again in five or so minutes.  After the last baby, she was gone.

Once I was sure she was done, I nailed a metal grate over the opening into the top of the pillar so no other animal in the future would consider it a safe haven to hang out in.  Success.  I congratulated myself on getting this issue resolved in a humane way.

You would think that would be the end of the story, but no.  A couple of days later I got a call from our neighbor complaining that the racoon had moved into their pillar. So, we passed on the remaining stinky packets to them, and they too were able to evict mom and the babies from their pillar.  We assume that the racoon found a more appropriate location to raise her kids as we have not seen her since.

The lesson learned here is not to get too comfortable in any aspect of your life, for as long as you live because you never know when a racoon is going to show up.

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Please send comments on this article to william@wwittreich.com.