How dare he?!?!

Parent Cafe
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<p>He wanted to come in my patio door! I couldn’t believe it!</p>

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<p>How cute. Better than the scruffy skunk that tried to come in my door a couple of years back. Though with the skunk it was likely he had rabies as the behavior was unusual.</p>

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<p>That’s a great picture…Really…did he just sit there while you ran for the camera???</p>

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<p>I was sure this thread was going to be about Kanye West…:rolleyes:</p>

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<p>ugh… one year I had a squirrel come and hang on my window screen. He must have died through the winter, but during that year his (her) behavior was persistent. Hope Mr. Racoon goes away for you.</p>

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<p>We used to have a family of racoons who lived under our deck and would scratch on the door to come in in the same place as the cats …(back before the dogs)…and we always had to look down to make sure who it was we were letting in. One night in the early summer, it was dark out and I was petting the cat…or so I thought. When I looked down? :eek:…jumped right off the deck!</p>

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<p>momof3sons - so was I! </p>

<p>owlice, your racoon is much cuter than our opossums.</p>

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<p>opera-mom, yes, he did! I thought for sure he’d clamber down, but he didn’t. I had to shoo him away, and once he was off the screen, I started to open the screen door, but he started in the direction of the door as though to come in!</p>

<p>I had heard something climbing the screen at least three times earlier and assumed it was my little cat, who lets me know he wants in sometimes by climbing a screen (though I’m not particularly fond of that method of communication…). I usually wait to hear a “meow,” though, before I respond (so as to not reinforce the screen-climbing). The fourth time, though, I thought I’d best see what was up, and what was up was the baby raccoon!</p>

<p>(Turns out the little cat was indoors snoozing in a corner the entire time.)</p>

<p>poetgrl, :eek: indeed, and a yikes, too!!</p>

<p>Mary13, I have opossums, too, but so far, not hanging on any screens, and it’d had better stay that way!!</p>

<p>Now, off to Google Kanye West, as I have no idea who that is!</p>

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<p>I like how it looks as if he is waving at you!</p>

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<p>A friend recently had a nighttime visit from a raccoon family. She made the mistake of leaving first floor windows open and they slit the screens and climbed right in. None of her three! dogs heard a thing. She finally was awakened by something and when she entered the living room, she saw Mr. Raccoon sitting on her dining room table eating a banana from her fruit bowl. </p>

<p>Many years ago we had a raccoon give birth on top of our fireplace insert. We allowed them to stay until the babies were old enough to be removed which ended up being a couple of months. They are incredibly noisy! I remember my kids complaining in the evenings when we’d be watching tv and we’d have to turn the volume up so that we could hear over the sounds of the baby raccoons. We finally had a wildlife expert come and remove them. They were very cute but they can also be very destructive, not to mention pretty nasty at times.</p>

<p>I, too, thought this was going to be about Kanye West’s behavior last night.</p>

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<p>Does anyone else get awakened in the night by raccoon fights? They can really scream. Doesn’t happen often, but sheesh.</p>

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<p>We have a porcupine up at our cabin who LOVES to chew on the wall logs!! Oh, my gosh, he does it in the middle of the night, and it sounds like a logging crew is at work! DH poked him with a long stick one night, but he was back at it the next evening. He’s very destructive, so we’re going to have to dispose of him somehow. :-(</p>

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<p>We’ve heard some horrendous screaming in the neighbors’ yards, to the point where S2 wanted to call the cops – it sounded that scary. I always thought it was cats, but the raccoons are alive and thriving in our neighborhood. Maybe they were the ones having the party!</p>

<p>Owlice, love the pic. Our friends in northern CA had a whole family of raccoons who would come to their back porch, grab the screen door and bang it against the door frame (the door had a latch hook) until they were fed. They finally had to disabuse the critters of that habit and the late night snacks.</p>

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<p>Your pic makes for a great noob photoshop.</p>

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<p>The young ones can be very curious. We used to let mom raccoon eat a snack on the deck while the kits ran in and out of the playroom, but they grow up fast and lose interest in people.</p>

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<p>I hate raccoons. We have very large ones here. I have had them jump out of trash cans and they sit on my back porch. Yikes.</p>

<p>That said, your raccoon is rather cute. But I would have freaked out if he was on my screen.</p>

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<p>owlice, what a funny picture! A friend of mine has a video of a couple of raccons and her cats “communicating” through the closed sliding patio door. She keeps her camera on the kitchen counter to capture such “YouTube moments”.</p>

<p>One evening in July I was picking cherries from the Rainier cherry tree in our backyard. When I was done with the low-hanging fruit, I decided to climb a few branches to reach the juiciest cherries closer to the tree top. To my surprise, I saw what looked like a large, gray cat curled up on a branch. I knocked on the trunk of the tree, and the moment the “cat” lifted his head I realized that I was dealing with a young raccoon. I ran back into the house, grabbed my camera and took a bunch of pictures before shooing him off. It took a lot of sweat to get the “cherry bandit” off of that tree! I was throwing rocks, sticks and yelling at the raccoon for 15-20 minutes, but only when I poked him with a long piece of a PVC tube, he got up, yawned and lazily waddled along the branch and then fell into the neighbor’s yard to the delight of my neighbor’s dogs.</p>

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<p>Cute critter! </p>

<p>Neighbor had raccoons under his deck that led to problems when their urine soaked insulation… We had heard noises intermittently since last winter and finally got things taken care of this summer- a raccoon apparently made her nest in our attic and used it as a playground- I thought it was a squirrel but the paths and poop in corners was raccoon according to the experts. Of course she left in the days between the initial inspection and repairs. We would hear noises at all corners as well as in the soffits and eventually saw bits of attic insulation on the ground. The raccoon got in/out where the undamaged soffits met the roof. Insurance covered most repair costs and now house is critter proof (they took care of bat proofing at the same time). Found out that wasp/hornet spray works as a raccoon deterrent as the critter expert used that instead of coyote urine for the odor that may have reached us.</p>

<p>Past experience had been with bird feeders- I gave up squirrel proofing long ago but fenced them in from deer (along with a woodsy garden of deer food) near the back of the house. Finding the sunflower seed container apart on the ground twice led to my wiring so I could still refill it but raccoons couldn’t take it apart.</p>

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<p>Raccoons are cute… From a distance. From the Monday paper:</p>

<p>[Raccoon</a> attacks Ballard couple, dog](<a href=“http://www.seattlepi.com/local/410135_attack.html?source=rss]Raccoon”>http://www.seattlepi.com/local/410135_attack.html?source=rss)</p>

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<p>Speaking as an old country boy, that racoon looks hungry. They like cat and dog food better than garbage. If times get hard, you can eat them. They do not taste like chicken. They are not kosher.</p>

<p>Good picture!</p>