My raccoon eviction experience

By Scott Beveridge


WEBSTER, Pa. ? The back porch to my house these days smells like an old lady's wardrobe.


But the odor of mothballs is not there to protect a woman's fine woolens or silk handkerchiefs from moths that could burrow holes into her fabrics.

The other day I sprinkled a 14 oz. box of Enoz Old-Fashioned Moth Balls around my Webster, Pa. yard in hopes of warding off raccoons that have invaded my semi-rural neighborhood.


A small family of the omnivores have been living since at least last year in the vacant house next door. I've seen a few of their heads popping out a hole on that old house's roof above its porch and back pantry. Mostly, though, those critters have left me alone until about two weeks ago.


I came home then to find a large bag of potting soil missing from my back porch, where it had been stored on a small shelf since last summer. Half of its contents had been spread over the deck for me to clean up. Then a few days later, I returned home to discover a small ladder there had been knocked to its side across other items, and, again, I suspected the raccoons of creating another mess.


It was not yet time to declare war, though, on those nocturnal bastards with fox-like faces disguised behind natural-born black masks.


That was until last week when I returned home on an unusually hot spring day during a sudden thunderstorm, which had created a cool breeze across southwestern Pennsylvania.


I opened my back door only to walk into a humid kitchen and decided to prop open the back door to allow some fresh air into my house. It would have been wiser to have opened a window before I stripped down to my boxers and propped in front of the computer in the next room.


A few minutes later a mangy wet raccoon ran past my legs and up the stairs to the second floor.


I immediately sprang into action with awful visions of that thing lounging on my bed, and then went in search of a broom for defense.


Common sense reminded to put on some trousers and shoes before heading upstairs to look for the animal in case it decided to attack in defense and also carried rabies.


Broom in hand, its bristles above my head, I returned to the front room and opened the door there. I turned around to find the little beast crouched midway on the stairs with its eyes flashing between me and an easy exit.


I shoved the broom's bristles between two rungs of the railing and swiped them against the bugger's rear end, giving it a scoot that quickly sent it scurrying back outside.


Then I turned to the computer and the almighty Google to search for how to deal with a raccoon problem.


It revealed the mothball trick, which reminded me about how my parents used encircled my grandparents' tombstones with the little white pesticide marbles every Memorial Day to ward off pests after they decorated those graves with freshly-planted flowers.


A few days after that raccoon eviction, I discussed the story with a friend, who said she had tried the same mothball approach to warding off the animals, and it didn't work.


So that leaves me tonight with wishful thoughts that maybe that nasty smell outside my house might just repel some of the black snakes that also have invaded my neighborhood.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-raccoon-eviction-experience.html

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