Here's The Raccoon!

I gave you a glimpse of the raccoon adventures over the last two days. I didn't have time to do much more than that. I've not been home much the last few days. Last night I was at a David Crowder concert. It was awesome and I plan on posting pics of that tomorrow.


I had set out the live trap Thursday night and had no luck catching the raccoon. At this time, I thought there was only one. I had set the trap, baiting it with marshmallows (known to be the best coon bait), and had, what I now believe to be, the boar (male) coon get in, eat the marshmallows, trip the trap and manage to get out again. I reset the trap, but no luck the rest of the night.

Here's the live trap...baited with marshmallows.

I reset the trap before leaving for the concert on Friday night. I didn't expect much, but had a small raccoon in the trap. When I first saw it, I thought it looked much smaller than the one that I had seen in the house Thursday night. I now know that I had seen the male earlier, but caught the female.

This is the female that I caught Friday night.

I actually felt bad for her when I was looking at her in the trap. My dad came and got her the next morning, but he has grown soft over the last few years and decided to release her back into the wild. Last time I went through this (over a year ago), dad released the coon too close to the house (about 2 miles) and it came back. This time he took it over 20 miles away. I'm not sure exactly where he released it, but it shouldn't come back.

I knew I had the coon caught and wasn't worried about anything last night, but woke up to a mess around the cat food dishes, and muddy footprints leading toward the cat door. Crap! There were two of them...should have figured on that.

Tonight I was sitting in the living room and heard crunching in the kitchen. This time I was pretty sure it wasn't one of the cats. Sure enough, I look around and it is a big boar coon. I got out the camera and went to take a picture, but it ran back outside. I got the video camera and positioned myself to catch it as it came in through the door. I got video of it coming into the house and then eating. I finally decided to put down the video camera and get some stills. It ran back inside, but came right back in. I was able to get some pics. I hope to post the video tomorrow.

He looks right at me as he comes in through the cat door.

At this point he's really not that scared of me.

Oh, and there is also a huge opossum that is getting onto the back porch, but at least he's not getting in the house (I have opossums and armadillos around the house all the time). I'll deal with him later. As I type this, they are both out on the back porch eating some cat food that spilled. I had put some outside while I drove to go get the trap again, so he wouldn't get into the house while I was gone. I'm hoping that the raccoon will soon go investigate the trap and I'll catch him. I'll definitely keep you posted.

Have you ever had anything like this happen to you, or does this stuff just happen to me?