Suburban Raccoons

It is bad enough to have raccoons in your attic, but when they also dig up your lawn and make a mess of it,  this is adding insult to injury! We have had raccoons in our attic which is what prompted this website. In the process of getting rid of them, we learned a lot about them and some of the things to do and not to do.  You can read all about this aspect in some of the other posts if you are interested or have this same problem. We strongly encourage you to read up on this issue to avoid experiencing additional major problems such as Raccoons digging up the Lawn.

We managed to deal with the raccoons in our attic and solved that problem. Unfortunately for us and our neighbors, they just moved to another home and now someone else has the same problem. This also means that this family of raccoons is still in the neighborhood scrounging for food. Before you think, well why didn’t they just take them into the country or a long way away from our home, there is a reason for that. It turns out there are lots and lots of raccoons in suburbia and if one family moves away for whatever reason another just moves in.  You need a permanent solution which we describe in one of our other posts called getting rid of raccoons.

Raccoons digging up the Lawn

Anyway, they are still in the neighborhood and they scrounge for food in people’s garbage cans, their gardens as well as look for grubs and even berries.  This is where our lawn comes into the picture. Apparently, we have an infestation of grubs in our lawn. They are about an inch long and about 3/8th’s of an inch thick. They eat the roots of your grass and they are just under the root system of your lawn. They are juicy and good to eat I guess! This may have been what attracted the raccoons to our area in the first place. Skunks also apparently like grubs. We are actually not sure if it is raccoons or skunks that are doing this damage to our lawn. It really does not matter. The damage is the same as far as we are concerned. We have to get rid of these grubs.

The raccoons or skunks will dig up the lawn wherever they smell these grubs. They can really make a mess of the lawn. In one night they dug up almost 10 feet square of the lawn! The only way to get rid of them is to kill the grubs which we promptly did and we have not seen them back since. No food means no reason to visit our place at night.

Raccoons and Garbage Day

Also on garbage day, I wait until the morning to place our garbage out at the end of the driveway. They pick up early in our area. So that means I have to get up early and get it out there to the street. Otherwise, I would be out the next morning picking up garbage that is scattered all over the road!

It does cost some money to get rid of the grubs. There really is no choice in the manner. You either get rid of the grubs or you replace the lawn at some point when all of the grass dies during the hot summer months. The grass will literally have no root left. It cannot withstand the hot sun, since it has limited access to water.

So if you do not want raccoons around or other predators such as skunks, make sure there is no reason for them to visit. No food and they will just head off somewhere else hopefully!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.