Raccoons 1, Chickens -1

Beaver Creek pond

Coyote urine doesn’t work as a raccoon deterrent—at least not here on Roundtop where the raccoons apparently don’t see enough coyotes to have developed the notion of what coyote urine means.

On Friday night I lost a chicken to a raccoon or raccoons. A raccoon ripped the roof/door off of my chicken pen around midnight, and even though I was out there in seconds the chicken was already gone. Since then I have nailed shut the roof door. I have no idea how I will clean the pen now, but I’ll worry about that later. I am blocking the front pen door with two large railroad ties. The raccoons can move those two ties about an inch but so far that’s all. I’ve entirely removed my bird feeders and cleaned up anything that the raccoons haven’t yet found around those feeders. I’ve duct-taped shut another cleaning entry to the chicken pen.

And, I’ve been spending the evenings in my car with a BB gun waiting to sting the butt of the next raccoon that crosses my path.

On Saturday night I did get a shot at the raccoon. It’s a big one. I don’t know if I hit it, though it did make a sound when I shot. It might have been surprised by the sound of the BB gun, though. My nephew volunteered to lead a posse of buddies with their .22 rifles to put an end to the pests. I’m not against that, but the raccoon has not reappeared since Saturday night, and I’m not sure the posse wants to spend night after night sitting in my driveway waiting for a raccoon to reappear. I’m going to give the BB gun stakeout a week before I deputize my nephew.

On Sunday, Baby Dog and I headed down in to the valley to see how Beaver Creek was doing. We had a good early spring walk, and I’ll have more about that tomorrow.