Urban raccoons get it good having their very own lawns full of scrumptious earthworms and tasty beetles, hot tubs, swimming pools, and free showers (sprinklers) to wash in before they go to bed before the sun rises.
When raccoons are not digging into your pile of garbage to check if last night's dinner fits their taste or sniffling for the tree frogs in your geraniums, they could be sleeping in hollow trees, attics, unused basements, or inside the cool storm drains in the summer when it is not raining. If they get bored, they sneak in via the cat door and rummage through your kitchen cabinets to see what sort of dry breakfast foods you've got. Suburban raccoons grow a lot larger than their wilder country cousins since they eat the very same fattening foods that we humans consume.
Here are a few tips on how to deal with raccoons
• Do not feed the raccoons. You'll be helping to make them tamer than they already are. You'll also be teaching them to depend on humans for food rather than learning to scrounge and hunt naturally.
• Address their lawn rolling humanely. Throughout the fall, winter, and spring months, raccoons would prowl your front and backyards searching for earthworms, lawn beetle larvae, and other tasty critters that inhabit your lawn. They forage along the grass using their hand-like paws, bundling up huge strips of your lawn by doing this. The impact can be rather shocking when you open your back door and look into the remains of your lawn the next morning. There are several ways to deal humanely with raccoon lawn rollers. Among the best solutions is the Scarecrow brand motion-activated sprinkler, which you can but at many hardware and garden supply stores. When raccoons, deer, skunks, and your neighbor's cat are observed by the sprinkler's optic sensor, it shoots a harmless but surprising blast of water at them, typically scaring them off. Then it resets and waits for the next intruder.
A swift and dirty way to protect your lawn of raiding raccoons is to get a roll of chicken wire from the hardware store and just roll it over the area of the lawn where the raccoons are digging. Stake it down with wooden pegs. Once the raccoons can not get to your lawn, they will go bother your neighbors. You can leave it on lawn permanently. When the grass grows up through the wire mesh, just mow it.
• Clean up rooftop bathrooms. Shake roofs are usually the raccoon outhouses of choice. For some reason, raccoons choose to do their flushing on rooftops. This can actually be a serious problem. The first thing is to dispose of the feces (use gloves, wear mask and use plastic bags to contain their feces) and hose down to clean up the area. Raccoons can carry a kind of roundworm that can be passed along to humans. Then spray a dog repellant and leave them around the problem area.