Suburban Raccoons

As far as the writer is concerned a raccoon infestation is more than one living in my attic or around my house somewhere. We have had a family live in our attic. We had a really difficult time getting them out and keeping them out. They would also climb trees breaking branches. They would go into our pool. The raccoons would dig up worms and wash them in the pool. Worst of all they would defecate in our pool. Feeding baby raccoons abandoned by their parents is not the solution. Although cute, they grow up to cause all kinds of problems for homeowners in suburbia. This was a huge problem as far as we were concerned and I employed a number of techniques to get rid of them.

Removing Raccoons From our Attic

We finally got rid of the raccoons from my house by installing a one-way trapdoor over the entrance to the raccoon den in our attic. They had to find another place to live and that meant they left to live in someone else’s home, which is too bad really, but that is all you can do when you live in suburbia. Remember urban raccoons are very intelligent and will have four or five dens that they move around to move into. This means four or five homes that they are making a mess of. Fortunately, we have eliminated our home as one of those places where they can live in.

Trapping does not work because they are smart enough to not enter the trap and besides what do you do with them once you have trapped them? Secondly, loud noises, mothballs, and many other types of things that you might try just do not work. They are used to all of this sort of thing and ignore them. The best way is to install a one-way trapdoor at the entrance to your attic which allows them to get out of the den but not back in. You must wait until the babies are old enough to travel on their own so that they can get out by themselves. If you don’t do this the mother and the father raccoon will try to break into your roof to rescue their babies.

Our Lawn Still at Risk from Raccoon Infestation

Even though we got them out of our attic, they were still in the area and still viewed our lawn and those of our neighbors as food sources. Turns out that they were digging for grubs on our lawn. These are grubs that are as big as your little finger and white looking. They eat the roots of the grass which in turn kills the grass. The raccoons did them up which makes even more of a mess to your lawn.

We tried two different approaches to dealing with this problem and it seems to have worked. First, we sprayed the lawn with a grub killer. This takes a few weeks but does the job and now except for one or two pockets, we have dealt with the grubs. We still need to get these pockets and will in our next treatment of the lawn. The raccoons will still dig for grubs in the short term so we had to find a short-term solution.

Electric Motion Sensor

The short-term solution was to buy an electric motion sensor scarecrow. This thing senses if there is any motion in front of it and then sprays a jet of water across the area that it is pointed at. Any bird or animal or human gets a surprise with this jet of water coming at it. It will not hurt them but does surprise them. Once it sprays water it resets, waits for 15 seconds, and then sprays again if it detects any motion. Since it is not predictable that seemed to be enough to keep the raccoons from digging up our lawn for the time being.

Now that I have blocked them from getting into our home and also eliminated the food source, hopefully, they will not be back for some time to visit our yard or area. I have advised all of the neighbors as well so they know what to do to get rid of them.

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