Jolt Country

(Um... I don't mean "fucking" as a verb up top.)

Anyway, here we go, this is the shit I gotta put up with:



Look at that fucker. Look at him! Well, maybe he is a she, I dunno. But now s/he has taken to sleeping out in the sun during the day on my goddamn roof. Which means everyone I live near knows she's up there. So I'm the neighborhood Raccoon Guy now.

And trying to get a fucking appointment for pest control is impossible. Look, I love Colorado, but if this shit happened in New York... well, first off, I'd have tons of friends and family that would consider it awesome to go raccoon-trapping. BUT, for the most part, the people in w-NY are so starved for business that they'd be over immediately to get that thing and get paid.

Instead, the third place I called would finally let me book an appointment. They could make it over Monday, but that didn't work for me, so six days later ... Tuesday, of all days, I guess this score is being settled.

He's already ripped off the garage door he made for himself. Who knows what else he is capable of? I wish I were anyone else but the friggin' Raccoon Guy.

Colorado is different than Oklahoma. If you call pest control for a raccoon in Oklahoma they would just laugh at you and call you a girl. Unless you really are a girl; then they would just laugh at you. Calling you a girl would be redundant.

Possums, raccoons, rats and mice love D-Con. D-Con is good stuff. It dehydrates them so that, when they die, they don't smell. That's nice because a lot of times they'll go hide in your attic and if they die and stink, you'll wish they were still alive.

They sell traps at Home Depot for around $20. They work. Once you catch one you'll have a pissed off critter in a cage. I read that squirrels will return up to 20 miles, so be prepared to drive them further than that, or you'll need a way to "dispose" of them. In Oklahoma that's not a problem (you can probably get a random passer-by to shoot them for you). The web sites I Googled recommend drowning them in a trash can but that seemed a little cruel to me. I have seen skunk traps that hook up to your car's exhaust that will CO2 them to death. That doesn't seem nice either, but at least they go to sleep and maybe they have happy dreams before I dump them over my neighbor's fence.

Personally I would just get a pellet gun from Wal-Mart and shoot that thing in the head. Shoot him hard enough to knock him off the roof or you'll be on a ladder with a stick which doesn't sound like fun. You could probably shoot it in the ass and not kill it and get it to leave too. It works for the neighborhood kids ...

Better get to fixing those walls and a coat of paint wouldn't hurt either, raccoon boy.

Colorado is different than Oklahoma. If you call pest control for a raccoon in Oklahoma they would just laugh at you and call you a girl. Unless you really are a girl; then they would just laugh at you. Calling you a girl would be redundant.

Yeah, I know - I'm lost in frigging Flatspace out here, with few family and even fewer friends, so I've got to rely on the inherent sociology of the situation to get me through it. Here's how bad it is: I don't have a ladder, because I don't have access to a vehicle that I can put the ladder in. I'm gonna have to get one delivered off the Internet. I sicken myself, so I know where everyone else is coming from.

They sell traps at Home Depot for around $20. They work. Once you catch one you'll have a pissed off critter in a cage. I read that squirrels will return up to 20 miles, so be prepared to drive them further than that, or you'll need a way to "dispose" of them.

In all honesty, if he did jump in the trap, I was going to bring him down by where I work and let him go. Just because it would allow me to make my commute productive. I love the idea of a raccoon returning to the exact same spot after being brought 19 miles away. The raccoon just adjusts its mask, throws up its hands and goes, "KRIKEY!" and starts running back.

In Oklahoma that's not a problem (you can probably get a random passer-by to shoot them for you). The web sites I Googled recommend drowning them in a trash can but that seemed a little cruel to me. I have seen skunk traps that hook up to your car's exhaust that will CO2 them to death.

Jesus Christ! You know, when it comes right down to it, the line separating the average family man from becoming Alan Moore's version of the Joker is a cubic foot of structural damage to his house.

I will confess that I don't have it in me to start mowing down mammals, or building some kind of Uncle Toad's Wild Deathtrap for them. I *know* it's gonna have kittens (and by the way, quick tangent: how happy am I to have "having kittens" back in my daily vocabulary?? The best thing, verbally, about being in a relationship with a gal is, when they are upset about something, telling them to stop having kittens about it, and then gleefully kicking your heels and throwing extra blankets and pillows on the couch) and I know it's defecating everywhere, but man, I encounter a dumb raccoon and I turn into a junior member of Greenpeace suddenly.

Maybe it's time people started calling you 'Mr. Thirty Ought Six'

Are raccoons endangered?



in a not unrelated note, that rat in my backyard that's been eating the bird seed from the feeder was shot at and missed with a ten pump BB gun last Sunday morning.


THE
PEST CONTROL
CAN BE ADVENTURE
AARDVARK[/img][/list]

It's an epidemic! The piece of shit stray cat apparently didn't get the hint that this isn't a hospitable place - I give her a good solid kick every time I see her slinking around. I think she lives under the barn across the street, so don't ask me why she decided to have 3 kittens under MY house.

I thought she abandoned them, so stuck em in a box and got some food for them to eat. The kids fell in love.. but then the mom came back later in the day and ran off with them one by one. Did she suffocate them or something? I hear that once people touch them the mother doesn't want anything to do with them, which obviously isn't true.

RobB, just go up on your roof and start touching the raccoons and see if they run away! I wouldn't do it.

How about the garden hose, or a super soaker filled with vinegar.

Jack Straw wrote:I hear that once people touch them the mother doesn't want anything to do with them, which obviously isn't true.

I've heard that about birds. Not cats. What the?? Cats?? I doubt it's true with birds, though, since I heard it as a kid, and 99% of all adults (when we were growing up) knew absolutely fucking nothing truthful about plants and animals.

Update! There was something in the cage last night!

I go out to check and there is something small and dark in there. It was a little black cat! He had a collar, so he apparently belongs to someone, but I had never seen him before.

He was whining in that way that cats whine when they realize their situation is hopeless.

So, I'm trying to open the cage through the back, and can't get it. After a couple minutes of this, I say "fuck it" and open the trap properly. He does not immediately leave! The longest he could have been in there is 8 hours, but he was already institutionalized.

So I encourage the little guy to leave, and he scoots out under the fence.

...

... So that will do it for the "raccoon trap" portion of the experiment! Very few things produce within me a feeling of sadness and anger like a maltreated cat, and it's mostly because at some point their human owners showed a distinct lack of even a modicum of fucking responsibility. Yeah, maybe that cat simply got out last night (and actually, if that is the case, him finally being able to explore the world and winding up smack in the middle of a raccoon trap is fairly hilarious) but more likely, people just "let the cat out." HerpDerp.

(My folks are visiting next week and have absolutely no concept or understanding that my cats aren't allowed out.)

Jack Straw wrote:I hear that once people touch them the mother doesn't want anything to do with them, which obviously isn't true.

If it were, Robb would just have to go touch his roof and the raccoon would reject it outright.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I've heard that about birds. Not cats. What the?? Cats?? I doubt it's true with birds, though, since I heard it as a kid, and 99% of all adults (when we were growing up) knew absolutely fucking nothing truthful about plants and animals.

It's worse than you thought - birds don't even have a sense of smell except for some of the carrion-eaters.

Who cares? I mean does it tear up your trash?

Here comes Knuckles with the unwanted coon joke

It all would have been much, much worse if Robb had meant--as I feared from the thread title--that he had forsworn women and become a furry.

Bruce

Worm wrote:Who cares? I mean does it tear up your trash?

No.

It did open up the chimney, from the outside. It may be running around in the attic. It may have kittens inside the chimney/attic, which would then tear shit up that way.

If it were sterile and it didn't shred my fucking house and it didn't have claws that rend and teeth that bite, well, I would still care because it could get in and attack the cats. BUT! If it were all those things, and I didn't have cats, I guess I wouldn't be motivated to...

Well..

No, I would still not want a wild, possibly rabid animal running around my house.

A wonderful addition to any ensemble..

I should have warned you about that side effect of the trap. For some reason they tend to catch the wrong thing. The first time I set my squirrel cage outside I caught TWO birds in it. TWO BIRDS AT THE SAME TIME. How does that even happen? When I got home the cage was thrashing around and two birds were in there flying around. Of course I did what any of us would do:

01. Grabbed my camera.
02. Took a picture.
03. Opened the trap.
04. Ran like a motherfucker.

Just put some dog food out for it, get a new pet.

Update! The Raccoon Guy threw a urine-soaked rag into the chimney, which is supposed to flush out the mother and her babies. Yes, babies! My goddamn chimney is a MIDWIFE.

Almost forgot. This is what two pissed off birds in a squirrel trap look like.