Trick is to Catch the Raccoon Not Your Cat

It has been a long night.  I worked until about 4.  The raccoon came twice while I was up, which basically let me first figure out that the dogs weren’t going crazy over nothing and then it let me get a picture of it.  I figured it wouldn’t be back again that night after being chased off by our pack of dogs.

So I went to sleep, or at least laid down.  Then the damn raccoon came back 2 or 3 more times.  The dogs went ape shit each time making all kinds of racket.  Our neighbors light started turning off an on, they apparently didn’t realize that we had an intruder and that are dogs weren’t just being noisy.

By morning (90 minutes later) my wife was getting up for work, she fed the dogs and the damn raccoon came back again!

This time the dogs chased the raccoon up the lattice work on our back porch and then finally the raccoon got tired of essentially hanging from our wall/ceiling on the porch and just climbed up on our roof.

We haven’t seen it since.  It might still be on the roof for all I know, but the pesky booger is probably sleeping off his fun in a hollow somewhere. 

Last night I couldn’t do much about the thing.  It was too quick and jumpy to take a shot at it.  It looked relatively friendly, not rabid so I was inclined to shoot it anyway, at first.  But after it came back 5 or seven times, and as my sleep was put off more and more, I was becoming more tempted to shoot first and bury the raccoon later.

Fortunately, for the raccoon, I was aware enough to know that shooting at things (in the general direction of my neighbors house) would not be a smart idea anyway. 

Unfortunately, the live trap was out somewhere around the barn, it was dark and I couldn’t find it in the dark.  So I had to wait until the sun came up to actually start doing something useful.

So now the sun is up, I’ve found the trap, got it set, and baited with cat food.

The raccoon probably won’t be back until 1 am tonight, and one of our 2 cats will probably manage to get themselves caught a couple times by then, but hell, I don’t want to go through another night like last night and the cats have been caught before without any harm to their health or sanity.

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