Conservative Political Forum

The worst part of a racoon attack would be all the rabies shots you had to take afterwards.

Man I'm old. I remember back when it was a series of painful shots in your stomach.

FOLLOWUP:

Last year's toll of dead raccoons was eight. The electric fence didn't work very well, but the pan of poison did. So far this year, two raccoons have died within feet of the poison pan. We still have a bumper crop of the masked rats in these parts, and I am still killing them every chance I get.

Two words, Claymore mines, they do wonders. :D

If I was facing this problem, I'd put up an electrified fence.

I was raised to believe anything you kill you must consume, but Raccoon?
I doubt I'd garner a taste for rats with masks.

Coon is better than possum. Possum is fatty as hell. Ya gotta boil that thing forever.

Oh yuck!  Tell me you're kidding!

Only once did I do that.......just for the experience to know I can do it again if necessary.

Yeah me too............YUCK!

However, they are better than grub worms.

Some of us have been to survival school before it was fashionable to see it on TV.

UPDATE: So far this spring/summer, ten raccoons have died on my little three-acre piece of the Earth. (Also two opossums, and good riddance to those trash raiders too.) Seven succumbed to lead poisoning -- caught in a Hav-A-Hart trap and unmercifully executed next morning -- and three from poisoning. The latest was a healthy adult male who died with his tail actually in the dish of poison. (See photo below.)

I have to emphasize that my little spread is an anomaly here. This is a community of roughly 75 homes, most situated on old-fashioned Ohio "town lots," generally a quarter-acre, maybe 66' by 166', small enough to mow easily with a push mower. I own three of those lots, plus a 1.7 acre tract glommed on the back of the town lots, plus a little more that used to be alleys and such.

Yes, we have a truck garden, and a small greenhouse where we grow tomatoes and peppers and other succulents. But my truck garden is not bringing the coons in, nor is the greenhouse produce. Most likely, the coons are visiting so often because my next-door neighbors think it's cute to feed the raccoons. They never actually see 'em, they just feed 'em out of a sense of, I don't know, stupidity? Do they think raccoons can't find something to eat at this most bountiful time of year?

If I haven't described what a raccoon does in my garden before now, allow me to elaborate...

Every raccoon loves sweet corn. The only way for a raccoon to access sweet corn growing in a garden is to climb the stalk. A sweet corn stalk will not support the 15-20 pound weight of a raccoon, and will break off instantly, allowing the coon access to the ears, but also killing the plant. A single raid by a single raccoon typically cost me 15-20 stalks, not ears -- STALKS. Put in purely economic terms, that is a loss of 30-40 ears of sweet corn, which sells around here for $3/dozen and up.

I'm just not willing to pay nine or ten bucks EVERY NIGHT UNTIL THE CROP NO LONGER EXISTS so some damn coon can have a nice fresh snack. And trust me, they come back EVERY NIGHT until the corn is gone.

I can't say why raccoons have practically taken over the night here. I know I'm not getting 'em all. One night last week, when I had a trap set and two bowls of poison out, I went to the bathroom around 4:30 in the morning, and as I walked by the utility room window, I saw a fat raccoon wandering by. He did not show up in a trap or dead by poison. But I'll bet he'll be around when the sweet corn comes on!

Other than the desires of a few die-hard dog-owners, fellows who long to hear their coon dogs run at night, there's really no reason for humans to hunt raccoons any more. Except for the desire to see my corn mature to the point of human consumption! Therefore, I continue to -- legally -- cull the local population.

If anyone doubts my description of the way Golden Malrin works, I offer this photographic evidence of a raccoon who came to call here last night:



Yep, his tail is literally in the Tupperware bowl I used to set out the poison. He died within a single step of eating the stuff, and that's about as humane as I know how to be.

Oh, yeah. The stuff in the bowl -- aside from Mr. Raccoon's tail -- is dead flies lying in the blue-tinted mixture. The Golden Malrin, contrary to its name, is actually tinted blue, and turns the soda pop blue when they're mixed together. The Tupperware container is full of dead flies, not exactly a bad thing around here, and exactly what the poison is made to do in the first place.