Living with wildlife: Raccoons look like bandits for a reason

By Gary Raham
Nature Writer and Illustrator

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What was that masked creature that bolted away from the trashcan? If it had gray to brown fur, very hand-like black paws and a bushy, ringed tail, it could well have been a raccoon.

If corn or other veggies go missing from the garden, and strange noises escape from the attic (and no thoughtless relatives are visiting at the moment), this, too, could imply that a raccoon is at large in suburbia. Colorado Division of Wildlife warns that while baby raccoons may look cute, they grow up into unmanageable adolescents that can be dangerous and unpredictable. And, unlike the human variety of hormone-spiked adolescent, raccoons are illegal to own in Colorado.

Though raccoons are partial to woodlands near a source of water where they can find housing in old logs, dead trees and rock shelters, they find that chimneys and attics provide a great substitute. Water squirts regularly out of the ground from nearby sprinklers, and they can get a discount on fresh produce in the garden and some pretty good, partially used stuff in trashcans that are not "coon-proofed."

A female raccoon looks for companionship between January and March, but then kicks the male out before giving birth to her litter of one to eight cubs. The male has little patience for fatherhood.

A vacant chimney or attic often seems like a secure nest for the eight weeks that the young are mostly helpless. During that time, cubs are quite vocal and emit an assortment of mews, purrs, wails, screeches and growls. Between seven and nine weeks, the cubs are running and climbing everywhere, so mom moves them to a real wetland and teaches them the hunting techniques that will set them up in the independent raccoon business the next spring. Raccoons enjoy a varied diet of crayfish, birds, small mammals, fish, eggs, insects, earthworms, frogs, berries, nuts and fruits - in addition to farm-grown corn and garden vegetables, of course.

An Audubon online resource in Massachusetts suggests harassment and access restriction as methods of raccoon control. Make chimneys uncomfortable for coons, for example, by stuffing an ammonia-soaked rag in the fireplace and playing loud music. They don't specify whether the music needs to be Bach, heavy metal or rap. This resource also suggests that a bright light in the chimney will be annoying, although another source says coons could not care less about bright lights, but will bolt at the slightest sound and run from your B.O., should you place yourself upwind of them. Once mother raccoon has left the chimney, however, the astute homeowner can purchase an appropriate chimney cap from the local hardware store or board up any holes in the attic.

The same source recommends protecting gardens with a 4- to 6-foot-high chicken wire fence erected on strips of 3-foot-wide chicken wire lying flat on the ground. Place the vertical fencing 2.5 feet in from the outside edge of the horizontal chicken wire. This will leave 6 inches of flat fencing on the garden side. The fencing on the ground should discourage the raccoons from digging beneath the vertical fence.

Some have credited raccoons with cleanliness because they are often observed dipping their food in water, but the procedure may have more to do with softening the food. According to researcher Dorcas MacClintock, who wrote an oft-referenced book "A Natural History of Raccoons" (1981), raccoons have a narrow gullet and have to chew their food well before swallowing - unlike less fastidious food-gulping carnivores.

Raccoons can give hunters and their dogs fits by jumping in the water or scooting along a tree branch for a while before hopping back to the ground. This serves to break the scent trail. They undoubtedly learned these techniques escaping from bobcats, coyotes, wolves and other predators. Raccoons also have to be on the lookout for great horned owls, hawks and eagles. And, although they have seriously outperformed cats, as one example, on intelligence tests, they still have trouble staying out of the way of traffic on highways.

Since raccoons are mostly nocturnal, a suburbanite may never see anything more than their footprints in the garden, which look a bit like human handprints but are only about 2 inches across. Alternately, mysterious rasping noises may filter down from the attic--in which case a homeowner might sympathize with the Algonquin Indians who called the raccoon "arakun," a word that means "he scratches with his hands." In any case, the raccoon's permanent black mask does little to hide the identity of this clever and sometimes charming neighborhood bandit.