Raccoons have been a problem for me for years. With 5 grape vines in the backyard and a bit of corn growing I have exactly what they want. They also climb up my 30 year old Wisteria in the front yard and get up onto the front roof over the garage and sit and scheisse (and even copulate) up there, protected from the rain under the roof overhang.
Their scat is full of parasitic worms and eggs and can eventually erode the integrity of the shingles. In the suburbs there are no other animals higher up in the food chain so there’s nothing keeping the raccoon population in check except food supply and they can get rather aggressive.
My neighbour lady once knocked on my door looking for some help in her front yard. She showed me the remains of a cat. The night before it had been cornered / surrounded by raccoons and half eaten. I told her not to worry, I’d look after it. I wished I’d taken a picture (yuk) because in a week there were posters on the lamppost about a missing cat. I called the number and a dear, grieving couple from a block away came by and kept showing me pictures of their dear Tom. “Was that the one?” I was mostly sure it was. Maybe it was best I didn’t have a picture.
Five years ago I bought an electric fence kit plus 500 feet of wire. My back yard is surrounded by a six foot high board fence and I installed 2 inch insulators and a braided wire on the inside edge of the top fence rail all the way around the 320 foot perimeter.
Soon I found that wasn’t quite stopping the persistent beasts and I needed a second wire so I bought 5 inch insulators and ran another line parallel to the first. It sort of worked. But when the arbor had almost ripe grapes littering the ground, I set up my large live trap and left half a cob of corn outside it and a half inside. The next morning the old scourge had looked at the trap and in his anger knocked over all five watering cans including the two up on the deck. Another time we left one bed sheet on the washline overnight and he tore a big hole in it just for spite.
Often I’d find digging marks and a gap under the old gate or the older part of the fence and I’d need to shore up that spot or place a brick and then another brick under the gate. Every time they got through there’d be carnage.
Last year the two wires just weren’t enough. They ate all my corn except for one cob and had taken random bites out of my squashes. I thought perhaps I hadn’t plugged in my fence early enough. Maybe if they started avoiding my house earlier in the season they wouldn’t come by later. This year I plugged it in a month earlier but eventually the grapes started raining down again and one early corn plant was knocked over and sampled.
So I set up my old standby. I built a quick 4 foot high frame out of stakes and bean poles all around the corn bed and draped it with ample pieces of plastic bird netting.
The secret is to leave a good two feet of netting draped over the ground all around the fence. They don’t like to get their toes tangled in the loose netting. The netting on the ground must be raised occasionally to keep any grass from growing through it and nullifying the tangling effect. That worked. We’ve now harvested most of our small stand of corn and the squash are safe.
But the grapes were still raining down from the arbor. So I bought more insulators and wire and ran a third wire. This time along the top of the board fence.
That almost worked. Soon, after I chased one out of the arbor and into the espaliered peach tree next to the gate, I discovered how he’d been getting past the wires. He’d been reaching the peach support posts from the taller gate post and getting over the wires there. I beefed up that spot with extra wires and it seems to be holding them at bay.
I’ve also made 3 foot by 5 foot frames with old one inch chicken wire stapled to it and laid the two frames on the roof at either end of the garage overhang. That should discourage them from getting up onto the roof to continue …. making more raccoons.
Happy Gardening.
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