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Raccoon wanted to drive tractor
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tedbear
Posted 7/2/2020 06:18 (#8349021 - in reply to #8346207)
Subject: More 'Coon adventures


Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn.
I'll add my story. I have a Morton Shop/storage building that is about 15 years old. The building is divided into a finished area for a shop and the other end unfinished for cold storage. One day I happened to look up at at the overhang and noticed that a hole had been opened up. Another day while working in the shop with no other noise, I heard what I believed to be a pigeon in the wall of the finished end.

Last week while driving through the next small town, I saw a siding installer working on a house. I stopped and asked if he would swing in as he drives by my place quite often. He stopped in the next day and was able to bend the metal back in shape fairly well. The Morton builders had installed light weight meshed wire strips between the rafters in the unfinished part. The fellow that fixed the hole noticed that the screen was missing in the area of the hole.

My conclusion was that a raccoon had busted through the mesh and was thus able to enter the overhang area of the building. The metal is very light and was not able to support the weight of the raccoon and it literally fell through to the ground. Yesterday I checked the building out again and found that the hole had opened up again less than one day after the repair. Apparently the raccoon had returned and fell through again. I can also see that the netting that the Morton folks put between the rafters to keep birds out has been opened up between several other rafters.

I will need to repair those bird guards with something more substantial. One neighbor suggested cutting strips of plywood. We think that some air movement is desirable so maybe drilling some holes in the plywood would be a good idea. Another neighbor suggested using Morton's idea but with some heavier chicken wire.

I decided to dig out my dog proof raccoon leg traps yesterday and go after the critters. These are the style where the raccoon puts its paw into a chamber to fetch the bait and then sets it off which traps the paw in the chamber. They are called dog proof since a dog will not reach down in the chamber. My two traps were a bit rusty so I decided to clean and oil them up for setting today. I got the first one working nicely and decided to take them both to my shop utility room to wash out the old bait and general dirt. After washing the outside of the second trap, I realized that it was still set from the previous use.

I'm still trembling to think of what would have happened had I put my finger inside the chamber to clean it and triggered the trap. Maybe that would have straightened out my crooked trigger finger. The spring mechanism is very strong to be able to hold an adult raccoon, I hate to think what it would do to a finger.

Edited by tedbear 7/2/2020 06:28
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