A Raccoon Problem

When it rains it pours. 3 days in a row i’d seen eyes in the dark and while they could have been one of my neighbor’s outdoor cats they looked a bit too high off the ground to belong to a cat and unfortunately i had my money on coon. On the 4th day a violent, all-red on the radar, circular pop up storm had blasted through and made quite an entrance and an exit. It was all of 5 minutes of fury and then it was gone but in those five minutes the destruction it caused with a shit storm of lightning was breathtaking. It was literally just a lone red circle on the radar. It formed, it raged, it died. I was trying to get the car under the carport and the dogs inside. In the time that i did this it passed. However, i did note that we were outside in an unfortunate amount of very close lightning. I had arrived home at the same time the circle on the radar had and the dogs just had to wait. There was an impressive BOOM of thunder and the sky lit up white. When i entered the house the power seemed to be off but the wall in the kitchen was making a violent buzzing and clicking noise. It was also vibrating. It scared me so i pressed reset to the outlet out of shock and momentary stupidity. I was still trying to piece things together. The wall had never been clicking and buzzing or vibrating during a power outage before. When that didnt work i came to my senses and turned the power off to the kitchen at the electric panel. Both green lights were still on on the surge protector on the pole outside. After talking to our electric company and a coworker’s son who was apprenticing under an electrician…it was determined that i likely had partial power vs no power as the window unit fan blades tried to kick on every once in a while and then powered down and the oven clock display and ac unit display were still lit up and functioning. All the lights were off and the regular outlets didnt work but the well was still receiving electricity. It was very strange. I was told either a transformer got hit or a tree was laying on the line somewhere but i was receiving some, not none, power. Nobody could tell me what was happening in the angry sounding wall so i left the electricity to the kitchen off. I went outside as i was on the phone and there, 20 feet from a chicken, was a big old skinny adult raccoon making a beeline for the chicken pen. I said, “shit!” Realizing if i went back to the house for the unloaded gun, got the bullets down from where i had them, opened the box, loaded it, and went back out…the coon would have a chicken before i returned. He was skinny and alone for whatever reason. Normally they traveled in little packs. This one was long but looked like it hadnt eaten well in a while. It was getting bolder and now coming in daylight before night fell. I couldnt risk going for the gun when it was 20 ft from the chicken and i didnt even have it loaded. I chased it away with rocks, screaming at him and chucking them at him. I was aware he’d be back in no time. He knew where the food was now. He was a problem i needed to handle. I had two traps and a coworker had a third which he lent me and then ended up giving to me afterwards. A guy at the gas station i go to in fredericksburg said not to use cat-food or tuna. He said that raccoons could NOT resist sardines, no matter how much they knew it was a trap. The first night i tried to trap him he just tipped the trap to the side and ate all the sardines by pulling them through the side of the trap. I was reminded, raccoons are smart little critters. Its a mistake to underestimate them. They’re not just a big jock of a predator. They’re crafty. A thing to know about coons: they can open anything you think they cant and if they actually cant get a chicken through the bars to make off with it, they’ll still kill it and they wont just kill one. They’ll kill all of them, knowing full well they cant fit them through the bars. This crafty coon would be back for another meal come nightfall, now that it knew we were serving fish so i made a decision to keep the trap stocked consistently until i could catch it because as long as it found sardines in plane sight it wasnt gunning for chicken. I bought a bunch of tins of sardines at the dollar general and decided to get smarter about my trap design. I zip tied the three traps together with the biggest one in the middle, so he couldnt reach through the sides to get the fish anymore. He’d have to go through the front. I put a foam mat on top of the traps, encouraging visual entry through the front, and i put a really heavy paver on top of the mat to keep the coon from flipping or rolling or dragging the trap to move the position of the tin of fish inside. I set the trap right at the back of the young chicken pen, where the coon was always interested…. I made sure it was all set like i wanted it and tested the mechanism that closed the trap to see if it needed lubricating. I smeared the trap with sardine oil and dribbled the juice from the sardine tin in the grass leading up to the entrance of the trap. I placed the sardine tin over the trip plate in the back of the trap but not too close to the back edge so he couldnt pull them out the back. I left my rifle loaded but with the safety on, on top of the dog crates near the front door, facing the direction of the coon trap. I left the head lamp right next to it with new batteries in it. I was ready, the rifle was ready, the head lamp was ready…what i didnt anticipate was that the dogs were ready. Cashew had watched me chase the coon, watched me set the trap, watched me set the trap again….she understood what we were doing. We were hunting a coon that was hunting the chickens. I went to bed, determined to give the coon a chance to visit and get in the trap without my face giving it second thoughts so i made myself scarce.

At 3 in the morning Cashew woke me up, punching her head through the open mosquito net tent flap. She nosed me and whined and then barked. I realized with glee…that raccoon was probably in that trap. I looked at her, patted her head, “Good dog, good dog.” I stood up and had a walk about the 1 room house, realizing we had probably done it. We had probably trapped that coon. We’d know soon enough. The sun would be up at 7. Cashew walked me to the rifle and stood, expecting me to pick it up. I patted her head, “chill cashew, we’re not gonna shoot it now. We’re gonna shoot it in the morning.” Cashew stomped the ground with one foot, cocked her head, pointed to the rifle, then ran to the front door. I shook my head no. I patted her head, “Good girl. Good girl.” Sometimes when she wanted something and i was peeing i said “you wait” and she knew that to mean i would not be immediately at her service tending to the door, the empty food bowl, or the bug she was going on about in the house because i was temporarily otherwise occupied….but i’d heard her and i’d be there eventually. With an aussie, its necessary to have such a command because otherwise you will have an Aussie nose punching you and then sprinting across the room, rinse and repeat, the whole time you’re trying to pee. In a one room house with the brooder sticking out the bathroom, “wait” was a handy command. I turned my palm towards the ceiling, bent my hand back, and flipped it up repeatedly stating, “wait”. She cocked her head in utter disbelief and then flopped down on her elbows in front of the front door and waited. She couldnt understand why i didnt want to go tend to what was likely in that trap but i knew, if there was a coon in there, i’d have to shoot it, get it out of the trap, and off the property within minutes or it would bleed on the property, attracting other predators to an area where i keep chickens and dogs. Everything needed to be done in rapid fire succession. As soon as i was sure it was dead, id need to get it out. I didnt want to be trying to do this without the element if sight during a time when predators are already out and hunting. I also didnt need a coyote or fox rolling up and going, “hey i’ll take that off your hands…”. I couldnt see in the dark so i preferred to wait until the other predators were heading to bed and i could see what i was doing. what i was doing.

At 7:05 i put my shoes on, took the safety off the rifle, and trekked outside, leaving the dogs in the house. I had a quick moment of celebration as i realized, not only was there a coon in the trap…it was indeed THE coon that had been coming 4 days in a row to try to get a chicken. He was unmistakeable…large but very skinny. I wondered if he had worms or his teeth were just worn down or what but this guy for whatever reason hadnt been putting on pounds like the other little waddling trash panda bandits. His tail was scrawny and barely had fur on it. I put the end of the rifle up to the top of the trap. A coworker had given me the advice, “put the rifle through the little bars of the cage because he’ll bite it and then you can shoot him through the mouth, into the brain…kill shot.” Well, that coon did bite the end of the rifle but he also grabbed it with both hands and did a sort of alligator death roll. I immediately became pretty unhappy the critter was messing up my gun and i shot him in the head twice and the chest 3 times for good measure. When i shot him the first time his head jerked backwards and he fell to the side but he was still violently twitching so i shot him in the head again. He stopped flopping but there was still a little twitching so i just emptied the remaining three i had into his chest. I wanted him to go quickly so he didnt suffer but i also wanted to make sure he was good and dead since i was going to drag him out of there with gloved hands in mere minutes and i didnt need him waking up and biting me in revenge on the way out. I gave him a couple minutes and it was real clear his torso was still. No breathing. I dragged him to the edge of the property in my trap configuration. Luckily, the foam mat he had pulled in with him and shredded had soaked up the blood so there was none left where i shot him behind the young chicken pen.

Once he was at the edge of the property i had a look at him and then said some quick words. It was nothing personal. You were after the chickens. I protect the chickens. You had to go. Thats just the way it is. I told him he didnt do anything other than be a coon but he still had to die cuz i couldnt let him get any of my chickens. I then tied my hair up and put on long pants instead of boxers and dragged the trap to the intersection down the road where i dumped him out of the trap for the buzzards to take care of.

The chickens gave me little fuss for letting them out of the coops an hour late. They had probably been listening to this snarling coon shred the foam mat in anger, chew up the fish tin, and try in vain to escape since 3 am. They were probably terrified. They’d heard the gun shots. When i let them out they had a look around and saw no predator. I think they understood i’d handled it. They were decidedly quiet and didnt complain or demand feed right away either.

As i went about washing the traps and putting them away and putting the paver back where it went, i realized the raccoons blood smelled just like mine. blood smells metallic. Its a strange and brain-alarming smell. You dont like to smell it when you smell it because instinctively it tells your brain something is wrong. Blood is supposed to be in the body, not outside, if survival is valued. So, the brain says “danger, danger” whenever that metallic smell is in the air. I realized that while i viewed raccoons as very different from me…our blood smelled the same….it was the same color. As a living thing, he probably wasnt that different from me….i concluded this sentence was correct. He wasnt that different from me. He did what he had to do and i did what i had to do. Id carved out a few minutes to process the morning’s events, but i wasnt sorry and i had no pity for the animal. When i put the gun to the trap, it wasnt like the possum i let go because it played dead and i couldnt machete it while it was playing dead…it immediately became a snarling vicious thing, biting the gun, grabbing it and rolling. Coons are my enemy. I desire no souvenir. Just the absence of them. I left the coon in front of the property on the shoulder at the intersection where the buzzards could have at it without disturbing the dogs but close enough for the other coons to interpret the signal, “coons not welcome here”.

I was so focused on getting the coon off the property before it bled, then rinsing the traps before the smell attracted another chicken eating animal, i had completely forgotten about the dogs. When i walked back into the house to put the rifle up, the dogs were waiting behind the door expectantly. I said, “oh, we got him!” I told the dogs excitedly, “it was him….it was that big skinny one thats been coming around. He’s dead. He will not be eating any of our chickens. We got him, we got him.” As i said it i gave the dogs a rough rub down that let them know we were celebrating victory. they wagged their tails and rough housed back with me, play growling and snorting. Cashew stamped the ground. I grabbed and held her face and said, “you knew he was in there didnt you? You’re such a good helper. Such a good dog!” I put the rifle away and set the box of bullets back where i kept it. I then let the dogs out to the dog run. They pranced out the door with heads and tails held high, on cloud 9 and super proud that they had done their part to alert me the critter was in the trap and we had got our guy.

The buzzards turned him over, made two holes in him, and pulled all his innards out the holes, then left the rest of him. Then it rained a bunch and he was very soggy and had grey skin but no more fur. A week later he was just bones.

Sardines was the missing piece of the puzzle. When trapping an animal the type of bait you use is very important. Ive tried to trap raccoons, possums, and armadillos but they never did fancy any of the things i used as bait. Nothing ever got in the trap. Realizing how well sardines worked, im confident that if another coon gets way too interested in the chickens, i can trap him/her and shoot them just the same. I owe that guy at the gas station cuz this was a much easier operation than sitting out in the mosquitos and ants in the dark getting bit and stung by stuff trying to make sure i was there and ready when the coon showed up. my coworker let me keep the trap so i can zip-tie the three together again next time i need to get rid of a nuisance animal that has taken an interest in the chickens.