raccoons are jerks

We live in a house that was built in 1926.  In a neighborhood that is full of mature trees and lots of foliage.  Yes, it is beautiful.  But it is also full of wildlife.  The title of this post pretty much says it all.  I know that many people think raccoons are the cute masked cousins to our friendly domesticated cats.  But do not be fooled!

Raccoons have decided to take up residence on my back deck for the past month or so.  They climb all over our roof and fence and trample through our bushes…all night, EVERY night.  Their nocturnal activities are wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule, and generally scaring the crap out of me every night. About a week ago, I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands.  And so of course I took to the interwebs.  And this is where I found this guide to getting rid of raccoons in fourteen steps.  Yeah….FOURTEEN steps.  WikiHow….are you crazy?!?!  Fourteen steps is about twelve steps more than I was hoping for!  They even included illustrations to help you along the way…

I started by mowing our lawn and clearing out any leaves/berries that I thought might be attracting our hungry little intruders.  Then I sprinkled ground cayenne all along the perimeter of our backyard.  Apparently raccoons have very keen noses and do not like spicy smells.  Here is the thing though.  It rains in Florida.  A lot. (By “a lot” I mean every day, but only for about 15 minutes at a time.)  And so even though I diligently sprinkled, rain comes in pretty much every night at some point and washes away my efforts.  Not that I am wishing a drought upon our state, but come on!  Just cooperate a little bit Florida weather.

Being sleep deprived and frazzled, I started coming up with new ideas.  I know that raccoons, like cats, do not like water very much.  So I decided that I would mix together TWO things they did not like…water and cayenne.

I was fully prepared to shoot at the raccoons from the back door as they partied on the deck.  The gun was loaded with a water/cayenne mixture.  And then my sister rained on my parade with comments like “they don’t KNOW they aren’t supposed to be there” and “their poor eyes! They won’t know what to do!”.  **Sigh** So, I got down off the proverbially ledge and re-loaded with just water, no cayenne.  I mean, I hate raccoons, but I don’t need PETA onto me over animal cruelty.

And so now…I wait.  All the nights that I just wanted to sleep and now I am all pumped up!  Hoping that these little buggers are not fond of being shot with water guns and decide that they should just take up residence on a more friendly deck.  I will keep you posted on the outcome!  Have a great weekend 🙂