:(

I miss my Lil' Bandit and Lil' Coonies.

Raccoon Heaven

This morning we called:

The guy came and took the whole raccoon family away. (He could barely lift the cage. They are really heavy but Anthon never had a problem lifting it.)

They will be brought to the animal shelter and gased until they fall asleep and never wake up. I'm really quite sad about it. They didn't know that they were considered "pests" by the state. They were just trying to survive. The mom just wanted to take care of her 5 babies. The babies just wanted to eat, drink and be merry.

Here is my last picture with them:

Here's a video of them eating grapes. They love...errr, loved grapes.

They also loved water. Here's a video of them playing in the water:

I miss my Lil' Coonies!

The Adventure Never Ends

We've been pretty content with our 4 raccoons over the past 5 days. They eat a lot and smell bad, but otherwise it's been pretty fun. But just when you think you have a handle on things, something changes. This is what we discovered tonight:

There are 2 more babies!! The mom has a total of 5 babies! Well, I guess there might be even more. We did some research and online it says they have 1-7 babies in their litter. We went outside this evening to show Anthon's brother's kids the raccoons and right as we got out there we saw 2 baby raccoons go running to the storm drain. So we brought the mom and 3 babies out of the garage and set the empty cage up next to them and within a couple hours we had caught the other 2. The 2 new ones were feisty just like the first ones we caught. Here's a video:

Now we have 6 raccoons in 1 small cage. The babies seem really content; as long as they have food, water and their mom, they are happy. But the mom has been trying really hard to get out and has been hurting herself in the process. We are planning on calling animal control on Monday, but I'll be very sad to see them go. Especially since we'll be sending them to their death! So here's some more pictures and videos so you can see how dang cute they are and why I love them:

They love grapes.

I Heart Raccoons!

I love my little raccoon family. They are so sweet now. They don't get mad when we get near their cage. The mom watches our every move, but the babies don't mind us. Anthon filled up one of those big food storage cans with water and put it in their cage and the babies love it! They climb up on the can and dip their little noses in the water. They are still nursing so they are still learning how to lip up water so they would choke a little when they stuck their noses in. So the mom would dip her nose in and then face the babies so they could lick the water off her nose. What a good mom! She loves her babies so much.


Here's so more pictures.


This is the babies nursing in the morning.




Those pieces of blue used to be a plastic bowl.

Here's a video of the cute noise they make.

The Whole Family

We caught the mama!

Within 2 hours of us putting the babies back outside and setting up the other cage with food, the mama was trapped! She is big and HEAVY! (She's much bigger than she looks in the pictures.) I could barely lift the cage with her in there. The babies were going crazy without their mom so we combined them all into one cage.

After we combined them, we set the empty cage up again with food, just in case there are more. This morning when we check on them, the empty cage was still empty, but the food was gone! Apparently we need to do some quality assurance testing on the cage and try again tonight.

Here's a cute video of the happy....or not so happy...family. (They are nocturnal so that is why these photos were taken at night.)

Look What We Caught!

Finally!




But wait, there's more!

We caught 3 baby raccoons last night! The are soooo cute! But they are also ferocious! Here's a video of how wild they are:

Last night Anthon was in the back yard and spotted something moving by the tree. He realized it was a little raccoon and yelled for me to come outside. He grabbed a shovel and tried to push it a little and then it started growling and grabbed the shovel and started pulling on it! It ended up running down into a water tunnel that we have in our yard and got away. So we set up the traps again with some peanuts, tuna and cat food. This morning we had 3 scared baby 'coons in those traps. We combined all 3 into one cage and put them in our garage so they will be warm and we gave them some food and water. Anthon wants to keep them until his kids come in 2 weeks, but I don't think we can keep them as pets for that long. We are going to try to catch the mom tonight. I'll keep you updated!

Dang Ol' 'Coons!

By popular demand, I have an update to the 'coon situation. I have named our pet raccoon Lil' Bandit.

We set up 2 traps that look like this:

But haven't caught anything yet.

Here's what the hole in our roof looks like:

All those loose shingles and wood pieces are thanks to the 'coon.

Last night at 2:30am, Anthon got out of bed because he heard some noise on the roof. I heard him going outside and in the attic and even though I just wanted to sleep, I thought I'd better help him. So I got out of bed and found him inside the attic:

There is a spot in the attic that we know the raccoon has been, but we couldn't get to it so Anthon decided around 3am that he needed to saw through some of the wood in the attic so he could get everywhere. Here's him going through the new hole he made:

Alas, we did not find the raccoon last night, but Anthon did see a straw nest in the other part of the attic so obviously the 'coon thinks it's home.

We'll see how tonight goes.

I Got Coons!

It rained all weekend and we discovered on Saturday that we had a leak in our roof. Our light fixture in our office was full of water and leaking. We also sprung a leak near our bed in our bedroom. Water was just dripping down like mad!

Sunday morning at 6am Anthon woke up to some noises and went upstairs to look in the attic to try to see where the leak was coming from. He shined his flashlight up there and all of a sudden something was looking back at him! It was a...

Raccoon!!! The raccoon saw him and ran out the hole it had made in our roof! Anthon came and woke me up and we went outside to try and find the raccoon. Anthon got up on the roof and found a raccoon-sized hole above our bedroom in our roof. The raccoon had torn through shingles and plywood in order to gain access into our attic. It was still raining so Anthon screwed 2 sheet metal pieces onto the roof as a temporary patch and to hopefully prevent the 'coon from coming back. Anthon also set out some tuna and got his BB gun ready in case we caught a glimpse of it again. Last night, around midnight, I heard some noises coming from upstairs. I went out of my room, thinking it was just the cats playing around. I went upstairs and both the cats were sitting there and then I heard something running above my head, in the attic. I ran down and woke Anthon up and told him the 'coon was back in the attic!

We banged on the ceiling and then ran outside to the back yard. We shined a flashlight on the roof and there it was! Looking right at us! Like this:

It was actually kinda cute. Anthon started pumping his BB gun and then it ran back to the front. We ran around to the front as well and saw that our sheet metal patch had been pried open, some flashing on the house pulled back and some more shingles ripped off...and the hole was accessible once again.

Apparently animal control is only available during normal business hours so we called them out this morning. The guy gave me 2 traps and said, "Call me when you catch it."

Anthon left town for the next 2 days so I'm on my own. When I get home I might have either a raccoon or a cat in the traps.