Would you leave food out for raccoons?

William Graham wrote on 05/07/2007 :
"Moonlight Mile" wrote in message
...
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In article ,
Lynne wrote:

on Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:36:29 GMT, "Sherry" wrote:

Look, I try to keep in mindthat the written word comes across with no
facial expression, no tone, and it easy to misunderstand the emotion
behind a post. You seem friendly enough most of the time, but because
your post struck me as a little preachy, I'd like to clarify that I'm
not an idiot, and my situation/environment is probably a little
different than most.

My post wasn't neccessarily directed at you, but at people in general who
don't understand the bigger problem of feeding wildlife and discouraging
them from their natural fear of humans. It ultimately leads to wildlife
being killed all too often (for example, bears in Yosemite), and that
****es me off royally.

Do not feed the raccoons. I had been putting food out for stray cats. I
won't be
doing that anymore as I have been accused of "animal cruelty" for trying to
find
a way to deal with the large numbers of stray cats in my rural area--this
is
just background, i.e. I'm venting. The cats like to come by at night, but
at
night the raccoons and opossums eat _all_ the cat food that I put out. So I
decided to just put cat food out during the day and early evening. Raccoons
are
"cute", but they are ravenous and will get into any food they can
find--they can
figure out latches. They will dig up the lawn under your bird feeder. They
will,
if they can reach the bird feeder and pull it down, break it open for the
bird
feed. I have shot a few raccoons (I'm not exactly proud of this) over the
past
1-1/2 years since the raccoons started coming during the late evening or
even
during the day. Just when I thought I had gotten rid of all the coons in my
area, several more come along to replace them. I nearly shot a mother coon
until
I saw the 5 or 6 quite small coons following her--my cruelty has limits. I
no
longer bother shooting the raccoons since all the strays I'd been feeding
are
gone by: getting shot as pests, starved or froze to death--last winter
which was
brutal in my area, were taken by predators, or moved on ( I prefer to think
this). I kept putting food out all winter for them but they stopped coming
when
the weather turned very cold and the snow was deep in early to mid-January.
Raccoons and opossums are not a problem in the colder part of winter since
they
hibernate, or something close to it.

Aside from being destructive, I've been warned not to try to chase them off
or
kick one. They will turn on you, latch onto your leg and they don't let go.
They
can carry rabies, and if you see one around during the day (not at all
normal
behavior) there is a fair chance that that raccoon is rabid. If you have to
shoot or club to death (people have had to do this) a suspected rabid
raccoon,
call the state police or Dept. of Environmental Conservation for cleanup.
If you
must club the raccoon to death in self-defense, you are exposing yourself
to the
raccoons bodily fluids blood, saliva, etc. Any animal (or person) not
vaccinated
that is exposed to the raccoon or it's blood is at risk of contracting
rabies,
so the raccoon must be tested and the carcass properly disposed of. Burning
the
carcass is not sufficient, I'm told.

Rabies is almost always fatal. It must be treated as soon as possible if
the
raccoon tests positive or can't be found.

Nature is often cruel,
MM

On the other hand.....

I feed the raccoons that come up on my rear deck. I feed them dog food, and
always the cheapest brand (37-1/2 lb. bags of "Maintain") They don't
particularly like it, but if they are faced with starvation, then they will
eat it. And that's good, because I don't like to encourage them to eat at my
place. The raccoons and my cats have come to an understanding. It consists
mostly of not paying any attention to one another. Although my sweetest cat,
Meggie, will play with the baby raccoons under their mama's watchful eye.
Our coons are not rabid....The state keeps watch on that, and issues
warnings when a rabies epidemic infests a population. They dart and test the
coon population randomly all year long. The only thing I have to worry about
is when large rogue males come to eat. This happens rarely, and my cats (I
have 4 cats) are all too smart to mess with them when it does. But my cats
are outside cats, and they face many hazards that inside cats don't have to
worry about. Raccoons are just one of those hazards. I believe their freedom
is worth the risk, and I treat them accordingly. Since the cats and raccoons
don't have to compete for food, they seem to get along remarkably well. We
also feed squirrels, birds, and an occasional 'possum....

My wife used to put out food for the foxes. This was in London which
some people may find surprising but apparently there are many in most
big cities. I don't know if it is the same in America ?

Anyway it just encourages them to scavenge more and they would sit out
on our front wall. The night before the refuse collection they would
rip the refuse bags to shreds.

--
Count Baldoni

"Baldoni @googlemail.com" baldoniXXVnil wrote in message
...
William Graham wrote on 05/07/2007 :
"Moonlight Mile" wrote in message
...
X-No-Archive:

In article ,
Lynne wrote:

on Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:36:29 GMT, "Sherry" wrote:

Look, I try to keep in mindthat the written word comes across with no
facial expression, no tone, and it easy to misunderstand the emotion
behind a post. You seem friendly enough most of the time, but because
your post struck me as a little preachy, I'd like to clarify that I'm
not an idiot, and my situation/environment is probably a little
different than most.

My post wasn't neccessarily directed at you, but at people in general
who
don't understand the bigger problem of feeding wildlife and
discouraging
them from their natural fear of humans. It ultimately leads to
wildlife
being killed all too often (for example, bears in Yosemite), and that
****es me off royally.

Do not feed the raccoons. I had been putting food out for stray cats. I
won't be
doing that anymore as I have been accused of "animal cruelty" for trying
to find
a way to deal with the large numbers of stray cats in my rural
area--this is
just background, i.e. I'm venting. The cats like to come by at night,
but at
night the raccoons and opossums eat _all_ the cat food that I put out.
So I
decided to just put cat food out during the day and early evening.
Raccoons are
"cute", but they are ravenous and will get into any food they can
find--they can
figure out latches. They will dig up the lawn under your bird feeder.
They will,
if they can reach the bird feeder and pull it down, break it open for
the bird
feed. I have shot a few raccoons (I'm not exactly proud of this) over
the past
1-1/2 years since the raccoons started coming during the late evening or
even
during the day. Just when I thought I had gotten rid of all the coons in
my
area, several more come along to replace them. I nearly shot a mother
coon until
I saw the 5 or 6 quite small coons following her--my cruelty has limits.
I no
longer bother shooting the raccoons since all the strays I'd been
feeding are
gone by: getting shot as pests, starved or froze to death--last winter
which was
brutal in my area, were taken by predators, or moved on ( I prefer to
think
this). I kept putting food out all winter for them but they stopped
coming when
the weather turned very cold and the snow was deep in early to
mid-January.
Raccoons and opossums are not a problem in the colder part of winter
since they
hibernate, or something close to it.

Aside from being destructive, I've been warned not to try to chase them
off or
kick one. They will turn on you, latch onto your leg and they don't let
go. They
can carry rabies, and if you see one around during the day (not at all
normal
behavior) there is a fair chance that that raccoon is rabid. If you have
to
shoot or club to death (people have had to do this) a suspected rabid
raccoon,
call the state police or Dept. of Environmental Conservation for
cleanup. If you
must club the raccoon to death in self-defense, you are exposing
yourself to the
raccoons bodily fluids blood, saliva, etc. Any animal (or person) not
vaccinated
that is exposed to the raccoon or it's blood is at risk of contracting
rabies,
so the raccoon must be tested and the carcass properly disposed of.
Burning the
carcass is not sufficient, I'm told.

Rabies is almost always fatal. It must be treated as soon as possible if
the
raccoon tests positive or can't be found.

Nature is often cruel,
MM

On the other hand.....

I feed the raccoons that come up on my rear deck. I feed them dog food,
and always the cheapest brand (37-1/2 lb. bags of "Maintain") They don't
particularly like it, but if they are faced with starvation, then they
will eat it. And that's good, because I don't like to encourage them to
eat at my place. The raccoons and my cats have come to an understanding.
It consists mostly of not paying any attention to one another. Although
my sweetest cat, Meggie, will play with the baby raccoons under their
mama's watchful eye.
Our coons are not rabid....The state keeps watch on that, and issues
warnings when a rabies epidemic infests a population. They dart and test
the coon population randomly all year long. The only thing I have to
worry about is when large rogue males come to eat. This happens rarely,
and my cats (I have 4 cats) are all too smart to mess with them when it
does. But my cats are outside cats, and they face many hazards that
inside cats don't have to worry about. Raccoons are just one of those
hazards. I believe their freedom is worth the risk, and I treat them
accordingly. Since the cats and raccoons don't have to compete for food,
they seem to get along remarkably well. We also feed squirrels, birds,
and an occasional 'possum....

My wife used to put out food for the foxes. This was in London which some
people may find surprising but apparently there are many in most big
cities. I don't know if it is the same in America ?

Anyway it just encourages them to scavenge more and they would sit out on
our front wall. The night before the refuse collection they would rip the
refuse bags to shreds.

--
Count Baldoni


I haven't seen any foxes around where I am living now, but there used to be
a couple of families of them in the hills behind Stanford University where I
worked before I retired. I doubt if anyone fed them. If a fox come up on my
rear deck, they could eat the raccoon food, and I couldn't (and wouldn't) do
anything to stop it....I'll feed anything that is hungry enough to take the
risk. The only rules I have is that they don't kill each other. (especially
the cats) And, they all seem to understand that....So far, at least.

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 15:00:16 -0700, "William Graham"
wrote:

The only rules I have is that they don't kill each other. (especially
the cats) And, they all seem to understand that....So far, at least.

I just had an encounter with a coon a few minutes ago.

I leave the back door to the mud room open for a while each evening in
good weather so Spooky can go out for a while and get back in (he's
too old and feeble to be able to manage the leap to the cat flap
platform) and when I went to close it after my late supper (it was
still light out) there was a coon on the top step with his head
inside.

He vanished immediately, unlike the one a week ago Sunday when I
forgot to close the door until 11 PM - that one was munching away on
the cats' food, and when I appeared, instead of running outside, he
ran into a corner under the utility sink. I had thrown my back out
and was in no mood to get out my capture pole and drag him out, so I
just waited quietly in the kitchen. Instead of going out or resuming
feeding, he climbed up the window shelves. I opened the window
between the kitchen and mud room and zapped him with a slingshot and a
paint ball (a paint ball might make a mess if it hit the large and
expensive window, but it wouldn't break it. The coon then climbed on
top of the open door. I hit him again - no effect (the paint balls
didn't break - they just bounced off). So, I went to the open kitchen
door, took careful aim and *SPLAT* - right between the eyes. That was
one red faced coon, and he decided he really didn't belong there. He
climbed down, creeped around the edge of the door and took off like
his tail was on fire. Might have been the same one as tonight, but a
popular game trail runs from the woods on the west past my back door
to the field and pond to the east, so it might not have been the same
one.

--
T.E.D. ) Remove "gearbox.maem" to get real address - that one is dead

"Ted Davis" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 15:00:16 -0700, "William Graham"
wrote:

The only rules I have is that they don't kill each other. (especially
the cats) And, they all seem to understand that....So far, at least.

I just had an encounter with a coon a few minutes ago.

I leave the back door to the mud room open for a while each evening in
good weather so Spooky can go out for a while and get back in (he's
too old and feeble to be able to manage the leap to the cat flap
platform) and when I went to close it after my late supper (it was
still light out) there was a coon on the top step with his head
inside.

He vanished immediately, unlike the one a week ago Sunday when I
forgot to close the door until 11 PM - that one was munching away on
the cats' food, and when I appeared, instead of running outside, he
ran into a corner under the utility sink. I had thrown my back out
and was in no mood to get out my capture pole and drag him out, so I
just waited quietly in the kitchen. Instead of going out or resuming
feeding, he climbed up the window shelves. I opened the window
between the kitchen and mud room and zapped him with a slingshot and a
paint ball (a paint ball might make a mess if it hit the large and
expensive window, but it wouldn't break it. The coon then climbed on
top of the open door. I hit him again - no effect (the paint balls
didn't break - they just bounced off). So, I went to the open kitchen
door, took careful aim and *SPLAT* - right between the eyes. That was
one red faced coon, and he decided he really didn't belong there. He
climbed down, creeped around the edge of the door and took off like
his tail was on fire. Might have been the same one as tonight, but a
popular game trail runs from the woods on the west past my back door
to the field and pond to the east, so it might not have been the same
one.

Coons are territorial, so the ones I have are the normal residents of the
area. They have become used to me and my, "rules" so they get along pretty
well.....If I don't leave out enough kibbles for them, they will come to our
bedroom cat door in the middle of the night and scratch at the flap and wake
us up. Then I get up and feed them. The other night one kept scratching at
the door even though there were plenty of kibbles....I finally figured out
that he was thirsty....(It hadn't rained here for over a week)....So I put
out a pan of water, and he was happy.....:^)